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MULTICULTURAL HISTORY TEACHING: VIEWS FROM THE FIELD
By

Pei-Fen Sung

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Teacher Education

1999

ABSTRACT
MULTICULTURAL HISTORY TEACHING: VIEWS FROM THE FIELD
By

Pei—Fen Sung

Debates about what and how to teach history in a diverse society challenge our
understanding about teachers’ views and their practices. This dissertation aims at
exploring the teaching of US. history of three high school teachers, who are committed
to multiculturalism. A case study method is employed. Data include interviews, non-
participatory observations and various kinds of classroom documents. Each teacher’s
practice is described and explained through the conceptual frameworks of conceptions of
history, subject matter knowledge, beliefs about teaching and learning, and purposes of
history teaching. James Banks’ four approaches of multicultural teaching is used to
analyze the teachers’ approaches to teaching multicultural history.

Several findings are reported in this dissertation. First, there is not one definition
of multicultural history teaching. Teachers’ practices are mediated by their conceptions
of history, subject matter knowledge, beliefs about teaching and learning, and purposes of
history teaching. The dynamics among the factors is complex in each case. Second,
teachers tend to employ the “additive approach” to teach multicultural history. The three
teachers use different additive approaches that make sense to them. The value of the
additive approach may be under-discussed in the literature. Third, the narrative problem

that is unresolved in the field of history reinforces the additive approach to teaching

multicultural history. And, finally, the institutional constraints such as standardized tests
impede authentic multicultural history teaching, which results in the reinforcement of the

additive approach.

Coryright by
Pei-Fen Sung
l 999

To Mom and Dad

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

If there is one word that I can use to summarize what I learn and come to value in
my graduate study, it would be the word “sympathy.” In a department where faculty
examine what good teaching is and try to live up to their beliefs as teacher educators, I
found “sympathy” as an important quality in my mentors.

I want to thank Lynn Paine, my dissertation director and advisor, for having faith
in me to do this research. She took me in as her advisee when I was at the lowest point in
my life losing faith in my ability to do a dissertation and any research. Lynn worked
closely with me in my proposal writing, at a time close to her delivering her baby. I
cannot thank her enough for her understanding about my desperate needs at that time.
Lynn is also my best critic. This dissertation cannot be good without her critical reading
and guidance on the analysis.

My appreciation also goes to my guidance committee chair, Bill McDiarmid, who
initiated my interest in history teaching and learning, gave me the opportunity to do
research with him at the National Center for Research on Teacher Learning, and
continued to be my mentor after he lefi Michigan State University. I thank Bill for his
continued support and his patience and sympathy toward me, especially during the time
when I was extremely confused about my academic direction.

Special thanks to Jay Featherstone, whom I wish that I had met and known earlier.

JaY’S insights for the earlier draft of this dissertation contribute to important arguments in
this dissertation. I enjoyed talking to him. His spirit and passion for life came through

OUT conversations. What inspired me is not only his valuable input, but also his

vi

continued support for this dissertation, even in his frail condition after the cancer
treatment.

My other two committee members, David Labaree and Lauren Young, are
supportive of this work. They provide valuable insights for my further pursuit of this line
of research. I appreciate their willingness to be on my committee as I progressed to
finish my graduate study. They truly want the best for me.

I cannot forget friends who are important to my graduate study at the department
of teacher education—Phone-Mei Chou, Li-Wai Wang, Zongyi Deng, Iian Wang, Li-
Hsuen Yang, Haojing Cheng, Steve Smith, Kailonnie Dunsmore, Sheri Levine, and
Cindy Hartzler-Miller. I had some enjoyable conversations about education and research
with them. At different times during my graduate study, these friends also helped me go
through some intellectual as well as emotional difiiculties.

I want to thank my father and mother for being such wonderful parents who
support me financially and emotionally all these years. Their love for me and dedication
to my intellectual and career pursuit are unconditional. Without their strong support, I
would not be able to fulfill my dream to know—about myself and the world.

Finally, with my heart and mind, I thank the Lord that creates me for his steadfast
love, the trials and tribulations that make me a more humble and sympathetic person, and

the abundant grace that he gives me.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 1
Why Study Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices? ....................................................................... 5
Conceptual Frameworks ...................................................................................................... 9
Some Approaches to Multicultural History Teaching ............................................ 10
Banks’ Four Levels of Approaches to Multiculturalism ........................................ 14
Teacher Beliefs about Subject Matter, Students and Purposes .............................. 16
CHAPTER II METHODOLOGY ................................................................................. 23
Research Design and Access to Subjects ........................................................................... 24
Data Collection .................................................................................................................. 26
Interviews ............................................................................................................... 27
Non-participant Observations ................................................................................ 29
Documents ............................................................................................................. 31
Data Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 32
What I Brought into this Study .......................................................................................... 35
Intellectual Journey ................................................................................................ 35
Emotional Concern ................................................................................................ 38

CHAPTER III LANCE: DEMOCRATIC BELIEFS, LECTURING AND THE

MASTER NARRATIVE OF US. HISTORY ............................................................... 41
Conception of History ........................................................................................................ 43
History as Policy and Politics ............................................... ' ................................. 47
History as Told from Mainstream Democratic Perspective ................................... 56
Approaches to Teaching History ........................................................................................ 60
Beginning of the Lesson ........................................................................................ 61
Lectures .................................................................................................................. 64
Issue-Oriented Discussions .................................................................................... 67
Teaching about the Indian Policy ........................................................................... 73
Beliefs about Teaching and Learning ................................................................................. 74
Assumptions about Students .................................................................................. 74
Beliefs about the Teacher’s Role ........................................................................... 8O
Purpose of History Teaching .............................................................................................. 82
Discussion .......................................................................................................................... 83
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 86

CHAPTER IV WHITNEY: SUBJECT MATTER KNOWLEDGE, PEDAGOGY

AND MULTICULTURAL HISTORY TEACHING .................................................... 88
Conception of History ........................................................................................................ 90
Adding Multicultural Materials ............................................................................. 93
Approaches to Teaching History ........................................................................................ 95
Teaching Feelings .................................................................................................. 95
Information vs. Interpretation .............................................................................. 102

Doing Research .................................................................................................... 109

viii

Subject Matter Knowledge .............................................................................................. 116

Beliefs about Teaching and Learning ............................................................................... 119
The Teacher’s Role .............................................................................................. 119
Assumptions about Students ................................................................................ 125

Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 127

Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 130

CHAPTER V JERRY: MAINSTREAM HISTORY, STANDARDS, AND

MULTICULTURAL HISTORY TEACHING ........................................................... 131
Conceptions of History .................................................................................................... 133
Multicultural History Teaching ........................................................................................ 139
Different Perspectives .......................................................................................... 140
Text as Interpretation ........................................................................................... 144
Past-Present Connection ...................................................................................... 150
Inclusion as Human Commonality ....................................................................... 157
Challenges to Multicultural History Teaching ..................................................... 163
Institutional Constraints ................................................................................................... 166
Beliefs about Teaching and Learning ............................................................................... 169
Beliefs about the Teacher’s Role ......................................................................... 169
Assumptions about Students ................................................................................ 171
Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 175
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 179

CHAPTER VI MULTICULTURAL HISTORY TEACHING: CULTURAL

TRANSMISSION AND MULTICULTURALISM .................................................... 181
Mediating Multicultural History Teaching ...................................................................... 184
Teachers’ Conceptions of History ........................................................................ 184
Teachers’ Beliefs about Teaching and Learning .................................................. 192

Subject Matter Knowledge .................................................................................. 204

Goals for Teaching History .................................................................................. 214

Why the Additive Approach? .............................................................................. 221
Challenges for Multicultural History Teaching ............................................................... 223
The Narrative Problem ......................................................................................... 224

The Problem of Institutional Constraints ............................................................. 229
Synthesizing Multicultural History Teaching .................................................................. 234
Centrality, Voice, and Human Agency ................................................................. 235

Depth, Process, and Controversy ......................................................................... 237

The Narrative Problem Revisited ......................................................................... 239
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 240
Aflerwords ....................................................................................................................... 243
Appendices ...................................................................................................................... 251
Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 270

ix

LIST OF TABLES

Table I Lance’s curriculum—1St semester
Table H Lance’s curriculum—2"d semester

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The 19808 and 19903 saw the American public’s growing interest in what history
gets taught in schools. One of the issues that roused the public’s attention is the idea of
teaching the multicultural past of America to all students. The purpose of this study is to
explore what three US. History teachers teach about “multicultural history”1 to their
students and how their beliefs influence their decision-making and practices.

The increasingly diverse population of America and the legacy of the civil rights
movement have propelled two major states—California and New York—to reformulate
their social studies curriculum to reflect the racial and ethnic diversity they have in
classrooms (California State Board of Education, 1988; New York State Education
Department, 1991). New frameworks like these, including the National Standards for
United States History (1994) put forth by the UCLA-based National Center for History in
the Schools, have engendered on-going debates about what the literary and historical
canons are for Americans. Opponents of the change of social studies curriculum believe
that some reform approaches are “disuniting” the country (Bloom, 1987; Schlesinger,
1992); whereas supporters believe that teaching history/social studies from different
cultural perspectives broadens the meaning of what it means to be American (N ieto,
1992; Renyi, 1993; Takaki, 1998).

During the national fervor on the issue of what history should be and how history
could be approached in schools, teachers’ voices are under-represented. Advocates of

different ideologies are usually scholars (Asante, 1988; Banks, 1996; Bloom, 1987;

I This is a term that 1 coin for brevity. I use quotation marks to mean that the term is still waiting to be

Combleth & Waugh, 1995; Kobrin, 1992; Nash, 1995; Nieto, 1992; Ravitch, 1991;
Sleeter & McLaren, 1995a; Steams, 1993; Takaki, 1993). Although teachers participate
in developing those standards, we do not know much about how classroom teachers deal
with issues of selection, approaches to, and purposes of history teaching when thinking
about including different racial and ethnic groups in their teaching of US. history.

The idea of including different racial and ethnic groups in teaching history/social
studies is no longer a novel notion to social studies teachers. Cultural pluralism
(Anderson, Avery, Pederson, Smith, & Sullivan, 1997) or multiculturalism2 (J anzen,
1995) has been identified as a distinct approach for social studies teachers among other
traditions, e.g., citizenship transmission, social sciences, and reflective inquiry (Barr,
Barth, & Sherrnis, 1977). We know from survey studies that many social studies teachers
believe in cultural pluralism and would like to incorporate “multicultural” materials in
their instruction (Borland, 1994; Tighe, 1994; Titus, 1992), however, what teachers mean
and what they actually do in classrooms remain unclear. Social education researchers
have done very few empirical studies on teaching history from multicultural
perspectives3 . In the meantime, efforts that aim to understand teachers’ conceptions or
construction of the meaning of multicultural teaching usually are conducted at the
elementary level on social studies, where teachers’ understanding about the nature of

history is not the focus of investigation (Gonzales, 1995; Johnson, 1994).

defined.

’ “Cultural pluralism,” “multiculturalism,” and “diversity” are often used interchangeably in research
reports. Multiculturalism include groups that are disadvantaged and marginalized in the society. The most
conventional categories are groups by race and ethnicity, gender, and social class; others include language,
religion, disability, and sexuality (Nieto, 1992; Sleeter & Grant, 1994). In this dissertation, focus is placed
more on race and ethnicity.

’ Very few studies deal with multicultural history practices (Mehan, Lintz, Okamoto, & Wills, 1995;
Montecinos & Tidwell, 1996; Wills, 1996b). Teachers’ reports about their practices are also limited
(Harris, 1995; Klopfer, 1987;1(omfeld, 1992)

Teaching history from multicultural perspectives is important for two major
reasons. First, the American society has been diverse. Teaching history that reflects
different experiences of the diverse population allows all students to realize where they
come fi'om and why the society has become the way it is (Takaki, 1993). Second, the
development of social history has challenged many mainstream historical accounts that
tend to be political and military and mostly look at those in power (Kessler-Harris, 1990;
Veysey, 1979). In the past thirty years, the history field developed along with deep social
changes in American society (Levine, 1993), and those who are concerned about the
nature Of history questioned how history is constructed, by whom and for whose interests
it is written (Carr, 1961; Novick, 1989; Zinn, 1980). Reformers have been advocating
that students should learn about how historical knowledge is constructed and how history
could be taught differently from “mainstream academic history” (Banks, 1992; Banks,
1995). The purpose of school history in reformers’ minds is not to transmit knowledge of
a traditional European American history, but to challenge the mainstream account and
view history from multiple perspectives and interpretations (see Jost, 1995 for a review of
the history debate). They argue that by ignoring the role of various groups—African
Americans, Hispanic, Asian, women, etc4.—historians have actually presented a view of
the past that is skewed toward the political history and that the view distorts the much
broader conception of the past available in social accounts (Appleby, Hunt, & Jacob,
1994; Foner, 1990; Stearns, 1993).

The issue of what history gets taught in schools about different racial and ethnic

- ‘h.

 

‘111 this dissertation, when I refer to various groups or different groups of people, I am referring to groups
that are marginalized historically. Sometimes, I will mention just people of color and women; sometimes, I
“a" also add social class, people’s sexual orientation and disabilities as the silenced groups. I will not give

along list every time to illustrate what different groups mean.

groups in America is not an issue that is unique to the American society. With the
exception of few countries like Iceland and the Koreas, citizens of most countries do not
share the same language or belong to the same ethnic group (Kymlicka, 1995). As ideas
of equality and liberty are brought forth by people’s aspirations for democracy, most
societies and nation-states will have to face or are facing the question of who owns the
knowledge that gets taught in schools and who owns the interpretation of the past5 .
Nations are just beginning to learn about their multicultural societies and deal with issues
of discrimination and racism that have plagued societies’ cohesivenessé. In the US,
multicultural citizenship education is believed to be increasingly important for the
American democracy (Banks, 1997).

Gender and class also intersect with race to be crucial in understanding who
controls historical interpretations. This dissertation will discuss diversity as the teacher
defines it. However, emphasis will be placed upon race and ethnicity because they
remain a vital standpoint in interpreting the past of the United States as a nation (Olneck,
1990; Omi & Winant, 1994; Takaki, 1993). There is growing consensus that
multicultural history education is an important issue, however, too little effort is made to
understand what happens in the classrooms and the reasons why teachers make their
curriculum and pedagogy the way they are. Perspectives from the teachers and
descriptions about classroom practices will contribute to our understanding about what is

involved in the teaching of “multicultural history” in schools. My assumption is that

SRecently, a new national history curriculum “Knowing Taiwan” has aroused Taiwanese public
discussions about what history Should be taught in schools. Among many voices, the indigenous peoples of
Taiwan claimed that the textbook erroneous—that it still misrepresents histories of indigenous peoples. As
a Taivvanese, I pondered alternatives to educate children about Taiwan’s past, which has been dominated by
the Harr-Chinese perspective (Wu, 1994; Xue, 1996). Everywhere in the world, e.g., Estonia, although
under hegemony, human memories about the past have persisted, uncontrolled by the official account
(Tulviste & Wertsch, 1994).

 

through understanding teacher’s beliefs and practices, public debates about the goals of
multiculturalism and ways of achieving them will be elucidated from the perspective of
classroom teachers.

This dissertation seeks to understand how history teachers who have a
commitment toward multiculturalism think about and enact their goals for teaching
history. In what ways do teachers address the multicultural past through their subject
matter? The debate about history in schools reminds us that competing views about
history exist among policy makers, educators and the general public. What do history
teachers think about multiculturalism? And, how do they mediate often competing goals
of history education? In what ways do teachers’ beliefs about the subject matter, students
and purposes play roles in their enactment of the curricultun?

Therefore, two major research questions in this study are:

(1) What and how do teachers who are committed to “multiculturalism”
teach about US. History?

(2) In what ways do teachers’ conceptions about the subject matter,
assumptions about students, and purposes of history teaching play
roles in their decisions about curriculum and pedagogy and mediation
of their many goals?

Below, I will explain why it is important to study teachers’ beliefs and practices.

Conceptual frameworks that directed this study and helped analyze the data will be

ifltr0duced. I will sketch the organizational structure for this dissertation at the end.

Why Study Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices?

The necessity to study classroom teachers’ views and beliefs about their choices

_ _ ‘5‘
\‘

\ ___._# _.. a..- . __

Some examples are South Africa, Canada, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

5

of content and pedagogy stems from the logic that teachers are the implementers and
mediators who make things happen in classrooms (Parker, 1987). Their views matter
especially when most history debates represent scholars’ points of views instead Of the
practitioners’. We also learn from research on teacher belief and teacher learning that
teachers’ minds and classrooms are locations of investigation (Carter, 1990; Connelly &
Clandinin, 1988; Elbaz, 1983; Grossman, 1990; Wilson, Shulman, & Richert, 1987).
These studies provide insights about the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and
classroom practices or between their knowledge and practices. For example, we learn
from Grossman’s (1990) study that English teachers who possess “pedagogical content
knowledge” teach English more effectively than teachers whose knowledge about
pedagogy is separate from their subject matter knowledge. We need to learn about
classroom practices in order to understand what issues, beliefs, and knowledge are
involved in multicultural history teaching.

Research in social studies has not been able to form a consensus upon goals,
contents, and approaches to teaching social studies. In general, educators agree that the
goal of social studies7 education is to develop effective citizenry. Social studies
educators, however, have been polarized by differing ideas about the nature of citizenship
education and approaches to educating citizens. Some teachers believe that history in
school should transmit knowledge; others think that history should encourage students to

Chtinge the society today. And, it is not uncommon that teachers adopt more than one
aPPI'Oach (Anderson et a1, 1997; Barr, Barth & Sherrnis, 1977; Jenzen, 1995). Because of

the Value-laden nature of history and the lack of consensus about what it should be in the

-\-

7
I Use social studies and history education interchangeably.

field, history teachers seem to play particularly important roles in making decisions about
their approaches. Hence, it is very important that we begin to understand teachers’ roles
in teaching multicultural history.

S. G. Grant’s (1996) study of New York state’s social studies teachers reveals that
curriculum standards and frameworks from the top-down do have influence on teachers’
teaching, but the effects vary according to individual teachers’ different personal
experiences and beliefs, their reaction to organizational factors and policy initiatives.
While Grant found that external factors have an effect on teaching, he pointed out that
teachers remain the mediators who transform their curriculum according to how they
perceive and respond to various sources of information and expectations. Grant found
that in all eleven cases that he studied, teachers had considerable control over what they
listen to and how they responded. What teachers commit to and believe in orient their
pedagogical approaches (Ball & McDiarmid, 1990). Teachers’ personal beliefs,
including understanding about subject matter, beliefs about learners, and purposes for
history education remain central to their decision-making (Grossman, 1991; Shulman,
1987)

Grant and Sleeter (1985) similarly suggested that teacher practice is determined as
much by teachers’ conceptions of society and education as it is by factors in their
workplace; even when there are no organizational constraints, teachers do not necessarily
b€><=Ome challenging and seek to teach in alternative ways. Their prior conceptions of

What teaching and learning is persist, which in turn determine how they respond to
organizational opportunities.

In scope, however, my study difi‘ers from S. G. Grant’s (1996) study of New York

state’s social studies teachers’ reaction toward multiple reforms across grade levels.
Rather than examining social studies, which represent various sorts of social sciences
disciplines, this research only examines high school history teachers who teach US.
History; and instead of pursuing the relationship between multiple reform agendas and
practices, it follows only one specific reform agendum, multiculturalism, in the context of
history teaching. I chose this narrower focus because we have no good research that
speaks directly to these topics.

Very few studies contribute to understanding teachers’ roles in multicultural
teaching. One study that is related to mine is Miriam Gonzales’ dissertation (Gonzales,
1995). It examines fourteen elementary teachers’ interpretations of the meanings of
multicultural education in the context of school-site factors. Her conclusions echo other
researchers’ findings that teaching practices involve a dynamic process in which multiple
“school-site factors” interact to influence teachers’ construction of the meanings of
multicultural education (Grant & Sleeter, 1985; Grant, 1996).

Yet my study differs from Gonzales’ in four major aspects. First, it studies
history teachers who have a commitment to multiculturalism in history. Therefore, what
this Study contributes is not teachers’ views of multicultural education, but teachers’
views of multicultural histmy education and how they enact them. My study examines
the dynamics between teachers’ beliefs and practices. Second, this study is conducted at
the secondary school level, with the intention of highlighting disciplinary aspects of

teaChers’ pedagogical considerations. How do teachers perceive the relationship between
their understanding of history and their purposes of history teaching? Very little work

has been done to address teachers’ conceptions of history, their approaches to, and

purposes of teaching (Evans, 1989, 1990), let alone research on teachers’ historical
understanding and purposes of teaching related to multiculturalism.

Third, this study differs from Gonzales’s in the sense that while Gonzales focused
more on school-site factors, I focus more on the teachers’ beliefs about the subject matter,
their students, and purposes. In this study, I explore how views of multicultural history

get translated through teachers’ personal beliefs and purposes of history education.

Conceptual Frameworks
The conceptual frameworks that I use in this research are drawn from two major
sources related to the research questions that I asked. My first question, “what and how
do teachers who are committed to multiculturalism teach about US. History” directed me
to the literature of multicultural teaching and multicultural theories. I will introduce in
this chapter some approaches that are related to multicultural history teaching as a way to
orient the readers to the field of multicultural history practices. More detailed description
of the multicultural literature related to this study will be included in the synthesis
chapter, chapter six. Within my discussions of the teachers’ practices, related literature
will be incorporated. James Banks’ typology of multiculturalism is used in this research
to help define where teachers are in approaching multicultural history. I will describe the
typology in this chapter.
My other question, “In what ways do teachers’ conceptions about the subject
matter, assumptions about students, and purposes of history teaching play roles in their
daisions about curriculum and pedagogy and mediation of their many goals” came from

my rfindings of research in history teaching and learning. This line of scholarship helped

me determine what aspects of multicultural history teaching that I would examine.

Some Approamhes to Multicultural History Teaching

There are many ways that teachers try to teach in the spirit of multicultural
education. In teaching social studies/history, the following approaches are referred to by
scholars and teachers.

Perspective-taking. Most discussions about curriculum reforms by advocates of
multiculturalism address the issue of different perspectives. Multicultural scholar,
historian and educator Alan Singer’s belief about multiculturalism is:

Multiculturalism is based on the idea of multiple perspectives—that it is
possible to view and understand an event or an era in more than one way. Did
the European Age of Exploration unleash waves of progress and prosperity?
For some people, the answer is yes. But not if you were a Taino, a Yoruba, a
Malay, or a European peasant. (Singer, 1993, p. 284)
Perspective-taking is perceived to be central to multicultural teaching across subjects. It
is about the way one sees the world as multi-faceted and complex rather than single-
dimensional and simple. To Singer, multiculturalism is a call for inclusion. Many also
argue that multiculturalism is to expand students’ experiences and choices for their lives.
This means that students do not only learn about experiences of their own ethnic groups,
but also others that together make the society and ultimately the world. Perspective-
taking, hence, implies also that one is able to get at a more complicated and truer picture
of the past.
Perspective-taking means that teachers begin to think about knowledge

differently. What appeared to the Europeans was an age of exploration signifying

progress and prosperity was in fact not the “truth” to those who were explored. “Tru ”

10

of the past becomes more complex. Some scholars claim that there is no one stance that
fully explains the “truth” of social reality, rather there are varying standpoints or social
positions fiom which reality is perceived (Harding, 1991; Riley, 1992). Perspective-
taking allows one to see things from alternative perspectives, an approach which is
believed to be crucial to a diverse society and our knowledge about the past and present.

Historical empathy. Along with perspective-taking, an important pedagogical
emphasis in multicultural teaching is to teach history “as experienced,” that is, to teach
students to imagine and empathize with people different fiom them. Sleeter (1995b)
believes that empathy could serve as a departure point for multicultural education. She
had her pre-service teachers learn to do oral history and develop ethnographic skills to
learn to assess another group’s perspective with this goal in mind. Historical empathy is
one important characteristic of historians’ practice. Helping students develop historical
empathy also engages teachers in teaching it (Danks, 1996; Zamowski, 1996). Sleeter
and others like her (e.g., Komfeld, 1992) differ when teaching historical empathy because
they have a framework of multiculturalism in mind, that is, the assignments that she had
the students do involve examining racial, gender, and social class perspectives about the
past. The purpose of teaching historical empathy is to try to teach perspectives
authentically. One feels for historical persons when one begins to see things from their
perspectives.

Centrality. Asante, the most vocal Afro-centric scholar, has been advocating
teaching African American students history that perceives Afiican Americans as agents
in order to help them see themselves as the center of their experiences and histories

(Asante, 1988, 1990, 1991). “Afiican history does not begin with the Atlantic slave

11

trade. Jews existed between the times of Christ and Hitler. Native American
civilizations flourished before Europeans arrived. Egypt did not disappear when
Cleopatra died,” said Singer (1993). Traditional textbooks tend to have a main narrative
that tell the American national history from the perspective of European Americans
rendering other groups insignificant.

Centrality is important to avoid teaching multicultural history in a superficial way,
glossing over some ethnic related information without taking ethnic groups as serious
historical agents (Sleeter & Grant, 1991; Swartz & Goodwin, 1992; Wills & Mehan,
1996a). Centrality implies that ethnic groups have their histories that are different from
the history of those in power. It tries to claim their voices and roles in historical
narratives.

Knowledge construction. Related to perspective-taking is viewing knowledge as
social construction. This is advocated by multicultural theorist James Banks. An
example of such approach is Banks’ teaching of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Banks,
1995) and the Westward Movement (Banks, 1993). By contrasting white European
accounts or textbook versions of the history with accounts by revisionist historians,
students learn about how history is constructed and how one’s cultural frames of
references affect historical knowledge construction. The purpose is that students learn to
evaluate historical accounts so that they may be able to make judgments themselves
about what the past was about and how it relates to the present.

Doing history. There is yet another approach that, although named differently, is
very similar in spirit to the knowledge construction approach. David Kobrin believes that

“when narrative texts, no matter how diverse, are used in history classrooms, it is easy for

12

youngsters to conclude that there is only one his- or her-story” (Kobrin, 1992). Hence, he
proposed that “studying history in school should be about deciding what questions are
worth asking, what questions count because they make the past powerful and personally
useful” (Kobrin, 1996, p. 330). He advocated a “student historian” program that teaches
students how to think historically, asking questions that are relevant to their lives. Such
kind of teaching that takes into consideration the nature of historical inquiry and
relevance of the questions to students’ lives have great potential to multicultural teaching.
Teaching history by doing history has the potential to show students that there are
multiple stories that are constructed by different questions, perspectives, and
interpretations.

Oral history and social history. Oral history and social history are often
introduced in classrooms that try to enact a multicultural curriculum (Boyle-Baise, 1995;
Singer, 1992). Oral and social history’s tendency to tell stories about ordinary people
(and often people related to one’s own life) provides opportunities to cultivate a different
attitude toward history (Stearns, 1980; Stearns, 1989). History is no longer his-story but
also her-story as well as those stories of the less powerful.

These approaches are not discrete approaches. They could be facets of one
approach. For example, doing oral history allows one to experience the nature of
knowledge construction as well as perspective-taking. In reviewing this range of
approaches to teaching multicultural history, my goal is to identify a variety of ways that
teachers use in teaching multicultural curricula. These approaches involve teachers
making assumptions about subject matter, students, and purposes about history teaching.

My review of these approaches does not tell us what teachers think and why they choose

13

to approach their curriculum in a particular way. In this study, I look for the teachers’
approaches toward teaching history concerning racial and ethnic groups and explain what

assumptions these teachers have about the subject matter, students and purposes.

mks Four Levels of Approaches to Multiculturalism

Banks (Banks, 1994a; Banks, 1994b) categorized four levels of multicultural
teaching to clarify the different approaches that teachers adopt to integrate multicultural
contents in their curriculum. The first level is called by Banks the contributions
approach. It is one of the most frequently used approaches, especially in elementary
grades. The approach is characterized by holidays and celebrations such as African
American History Month, Women’s History Week, Cinco de Mayo, and Asian/Pacific
Heritage Week. During these celebrations, teachers involve students in lessons and
activities related to the specific ethnic groups that are being celebrated. When this
approach is used, Banks said that the class studies little or nothing about the ethnic
groups before or after the special occasions.

The contributions approach tends to gloss over important concepts and issues
related to discrimination, oppression, and ethnic groups’ struggles against racism and for
power. This approach often results in the trivialization of ethnic culture, the study of
exotic characteristics, and reinforcement of cultural stereotypes.

The second level or phase of multicultural teaching is the additive approach. In
this approach, multicultural contents, concepts, perspectives, and themes are added to the
curriculum. But, the basic structure, purposes, and characteristics of the existing

curriculum are not changed. The additive approach is often done by adding a unit, a

14

book, or a course to the curricultun without changing the framework. Banks commented
that this approach shares important Shortcomings of the contributions approach. The
contents and concepts that are added to the curriculum often reflect the mainstream
values and norms rather than the cultural groups’. In this approach, characters like
Sacajawea who helped whites to conquer Indian lands is more likely to be chosen than
Geronimo who resisted the takeover of Indian lands by whites. The events, concepts,
issues, and problems selected are selected using the Eurocentric perspective. A teacher
may add contents about the Lakota (Sioux) Indians when teaching the Westward
Movement, but the event is still focused on how European Americans expand the land
from sea to sea. Events are not viewed from the Indians’ perspectives.

The third approach is the transformative approach when the curriculum’s basic
assumptions, values, issues, themes, contents, and perspectives are changed to reflect
ethnic perspectives. The major difference between the transformative approach to the
contributions and additive approaches is that the transformative approach transforms the
curricultun not through adding topics to the list of heroes, holidays, ethnic people, and
celebrations, but through helping students understand concepts, events, and issues from
multicultural perspectives. In the meantime, students understand knowledge as a product
of social construction and learn to think critically and develop the skills to construct their
understanding about events and people through diverse lenses.

The final stage of multicultural teaching is the decision-making and social action
approach. This approach extends the transformative curriculum by encouraging students
to take civic actions to put into practice knowledge and understandings they got from

studying the transformative curriculum.

15

The four approaches of multicultural teaching are helpful in viewing the three
teachers’ practices in the broader context of multicultural teaching. It is important to find
ways to characterize the nature of multicultural teaching practices, and Banks’ categories
Offer a starting point. My descriptions of the teachers will also enrich images of Banks’

categories.

Teacher Beliefs about Subject Matter, Students and Purposes

There is a growmg body of work that examines history teachers’ beliefs and
subject matter knowledge (Evans, 1989, 1990; Wilson, 1988; Wineburg & Wilson, 1991;
Yeager & Davis, 1996), yet the focus has not been on how teachers think about teaching
history in a multicultural way. Interest in inquiring about teachers’ attitudes and beliefs
toward multicultural history and their purposes of history teaching has been scant. Most
studies do not discuss teachers’ subject matter understanding in light of multiculturalism.
That is, talks about multicultural teaching have not been able to connect to subject matter
as a disciplined form of inquiry.

Scholars have stressed that new scholarship and new ways of inquiry are at issue
when defending the new national history standards that introduce to students people and
perspectives of different racial and ethnic groups (Nash, 1995; Stearns, 1991); however,
efforts to understand how teachers think about history and how their beliefs about history
link with their pedagogical practices and goals for students have been lacking when they
relate to teachers’ ideas about multiculturalism.

Teachers’ Beliefs about History."I While we lack information about the

8 I use “beliefs about history” and “conceptions of history” interchangeably to mean beliefs and

16

interaction of beliefs about subject matter and multicultural history teaching, we do know
that teachers’ conceptions of or beliefs about history affect their practice. Evans (1989)
was probably the first person who developed typologies of history teachers’ conceptions
of history. He found that teachers’ conceptions of history have an effect on their
pedagogical orientations. The five different types of teachers that Evans constructed are:
storytellers, scientific historian, relativist/reformer, cosmic philosopher, and the eclectic.
Each has a difierent style Of teaching and philosophy of what knowledge is. For
example, the storytellers emphasize transmitting knowledge and uses teacher-centered
instructional methods. The scientific historians stress open-ended inquiry and assume
scientific objectivity of history. And, the relativist/reformers view history as
contemporary thought about our past and seek to help students to draw lessons for the
future. They look forward to changing the society.

More recently, Yeager and Davis (1996) conducted research on teachers’
historical understanding through having them “think out lou ” about several historical
texts, and confirmed what Evans found: teachers’ understandings or conceptions about
history influence their curriculum and pedagogy that may shape student learning. They
found three types of teachers in their data. Those who view history as construction of
meaning demonstrate awareness of many aspects of historical analysis and interpretation.
One of the teachers in their study, Meredith, approaches teaching in this light by having
students analyze documents. Teachers who believe in history as entertainment view
history as a “story to be brought to life.” Better history is stories well-told. For one of
the teachers, Julie, narratives appeal to her junior-high students. The third type of

conceptions about the nature of history.

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teachers perceives history as a search for accuracy. One of the teachers, Jordan, places
his primary emphasis on studying the accuracy of historical facts and sources. As a
result, he emphasizes helping students to see which account is more correct.

Beliefs about the subject matter make a difference in how one constructs history.
Eric F oner’s account of Reconstruction diflers from earlier historians because he gives
more weight to certain types of evidence and he has an orientation toward black history
(Ball & McDiarmid, 1989). Preferences toward history also reveal one’s beliefs about
the subject matter. Pre-service teachers who prefer political history think of teaching and
learning history differently from teachers who prefer social history (Sung, 1997).
Grossman called this type of belief a teacher’s “orientation” toward the subject matter
(Grossman et al., 1989). English teachers who believe in the new criticism literary
analysis choose the literature and tasks differently than teachers who believe in reader-
response analysis (Grossman, 1990).

These studies have argued that teachers’ beliefs about the subject matter have
effects on their pedagogy and curriculum, yet, research is scant on teachers’ knowledge
and beliefs about teaching history with a multicultural focus. My research helps us
tmderstand how multicultural history teaching relates to the teachers’ beliefs or
conceptions about the subject matter.

Assumptions about Students. Knowing about the subject matter does not
necessarily equate knowing about teaching the subject matter. How teachers teach
subject matter is also influenced by their assumptions about what students could learn
and should learn, which are often influenced by their prior experiences as learners

(Lortie, 1975). McDiarmid & Vinten—Johansen (1993) reported that even prospective

18

history teachers who have encountered and engaged in the discussion of conflicting
versions of interpretations hold the conventional orientation to history teaching in
schools—lecture. Some doubt that their high school students would have the motivation
or the ability to do analysis and synthesis with primary documents. The assumptions
prospective history teachers hold for learners also reflect in their beliefs about teaching
and learning history. Most believe that teaching is lecturing to students and learning is a
reflex of teaching. To learn history, learners need only be told what happened and why.

Dewey’s (1964a) idea to “psychologize the curriculum” points out important
relationships of the teacher, curriculum and learners. McDiarmid (1991) claimed that
teachers are representatives of their subject matter. He argued that teachers have to pay
attention to the triangular relationship among teacher, student and subject matter. He
further argued that what is lacking in the discussions about teaching diverse learners is
the “lack of attention to students as learners of subject matter” (p.266). Noordhoff‘s
(1993) study of pre-service teachers’ understanding about Alaskan students found that
pre—service teachers have basic knowledge of Alaska Native culture, but they tend not to
know very much about who their Alaska Native students are as learners of history, and
specifically as learners of United States history. They do not have much sense about
conceptions of history that Alaska Natives may hold or about the particular knowledge of
US. history they might possess.

It appears that an area of research that is much needed is to learn what students
know about the multicultural past of America. My study, however, does not focus on
students’ knowledge, but on what the teachers assume students know and do not know,

how students learn, and what they hope their students learn about the multicultural past of

19

the country. I also examine how the teachers’ assumptions of teachers affect their
teaching decisions and practices.
Purposes of History Teaching. William Bigelow, a high school history teacher,
believes that “teaching should be partisan” (Bigelow, 1990). “As a teacher I want to be
an agent of transformation, with my classroom as a center of equality and democracy—
and ongoing, if small, critique of the repressive social relations of the larger society,” said
Bigelow (p. 437). What was spelled out is Bigelow’s purpose of teaching—teaching for
social change. In Barr, Barth, and Shennis’s (1977) typology of social studies education,
Bigelow represents the reflective inquiry tradition in which teachers’ purposes of
teaching are to prepare students to think critically, do analysis, and be able to take civic
actions to make change in society. In this typology, the other traditions include, social
studies as citizenship transmission whose primary purposes of social studies is to
inculcate students with fimdamental knowledge, values, and skills to be responsible
citizens, or, social studies as social sciences, an approach that stresses social sciences’
disciplinary way of thinking.
History teachers’ purposes are often irnbedded in their conceptions of history as
well as their approaches. Consider Evan’s (1989) description of this teacher’s purposes
of history teaching:
History is an escape. It’s fun. It’s like gigantic soap opera. I talk about
events and the kids love it because it’s a story, and that’s what history is.
What it’s for is to better understand ourselves. History touches everything in
our lives. . .past events color how we think today, they color how we act, how
things will be in the future. (p. 218)

This teacher’s teaching style is lecture/storytelling. Although in Evan’s report the

teacher’s purposes are not clearly articulated, we have some sense that purposes may

20

relate to teachers’ practices.

Sources of teachers’ purposes of teaching vary. In another study, Evans (1990)
observed that teachers’ ideological orientations have links with their purposes of history.
For example, the storyteller is a conservative who would like to pass on traditions and
cultural knowledge to learners; the scientific historian is a liberal who emphasizes
skepticism about knowledge and a questioning attitude. I also found that teachers’ social
political commitments relate to their understandings of history and what and how they
would like their students to learn (Sung, 1997). The teacher who saw that the purpose of
history is to help students understand where the roots of the problems come fi'om in the
society thinks about teaching differently from the teacher who believes that high school
students need to learn about the “basics” of American history. They think about teaching
Native American history in different terms. While the former would like to stress
different perspectives and help students understand how history is constructed, the latter
believes that teaching Native American history is to “cry over spilled milk.” Their
purposes for history teaching seem to distinguish them from each other.

Of the few studies that touch upon the relationship between history teachers’
purposes and practices, none deals with teachers’ multiple concerns and purposes when
teaching history. The research tendency to categorize history teachers as one way or the
other fails to capture history or social studies teachers’ many goals. My assumption for
this study is that history teachers’ purposes are likely to be multiple and perhaps
conflicting because (1) history is interpretive and (2) the role of history in the school
curriculum is controversial, and (3) goals for schooling more generally are complex and

often contradictory (Labaree, 1997). Administrators, parents, students, and other teachers

21

all have expectations for what history is and what it is supposed to do. Therefore, the
role of teachers is particularly important in making decisions and mediating their goals.

Purposes or the “end-in-view” guide teaching (Dewey, 1964). The teachers’
purposes for teaching multicultural history tell us about their practices and vice versa.
The results of my inquiry about teachers’ beliefs about and enactment of their purposes
help us understand what factors are involved in the teaching of “multicultural history” in
these three teachers’ worlds. By examining these three teachers, we can begin to raise
questions that open up and add important complexity to our understanding of
multicultural history teaching. We can begin to discuss some of the difficulties and
challenges that are involved in practices of multicultural history teaching.

In chapter two I describe my research methodology, my assumptions, the process
of selecting my informants, gathering and analyzing the data. Chapters three, four, and
five are case studies of three US. History teachers implementing multicultural history in
their classrooms. In each case, I describe and analyze the teacher’s beliefs and practices.
Finally, in chapter six, I contrast the teachers’ approaches and provide perspectives to
look at multicultural history teaching as implemented by the teachers, the challenges that

are raised, and the problems that are exposed by the teachers’ beliefs and practices.

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CHAPTER H

METHODOLOGY

I used a case study design as a method for this study because my goal in this
project was to describe and explain how three history teachers address the teaching of
multicultural history in high schools in order to better understand how and why teachers
teach the kind of “multicultural history” they do. Bogdan and Bilden (1992) mentioned
that “qualitative researcher’s goal is to better understand human behavior and experience.
They seek to grasp the processes by which people construct meaning and to describe
what those meanings are” (p. 49). My purpose was to better understand how teachers
perceive multicultural history and how they decide what is appropriate to do in their
classrooms. There are theoretical discussions and survey studies on multicultural
teaching, but there are not very many ethnographic studies that look closely at classroom
practices using teachers and their classrooms as units of analysis. A case study allows me
to bring new knowledge from the classroom into the field. Merriam said, “Anchored in
real-life situations, the case study results in a rich. . .account of the phenomenon. It offers
insights and illuminates meaning, .. .which can be construed as tentative hypotheses that
help structure future research; hence case study plays an important role in advancing a
field’s knowledge base” (Merriam, 1988, p.34). By studying the teachers’ beliefs and
their practices in-depth, I hope that multicultural educators, policymakers, teachers,
scholars, and the public will be better informed about issues that we had not paid
attention to.

This chapter describes the subjects that I selected for this study as well as how

and why I selected them. I also provide descriptions of my data collection methods and

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process of data analysis. Finally, I will reflect upon my role as an agent for this
qualitative research, what frameworks I brought into the study, and how I handled or

became thoughtful about my biases in this research.

Research Design and Access to Subjects

As I have explained above, this research was meant to be a case study. The case
is about both the teachers’ beliefs and their practices of a particular kind of reform idea—
multicultural history. It is about exploring the teachers’ ideas of multicultural history
through studying their beliefs and practices. Because I intended to examine classroom
teachers’ views and practices in-depth, I did not choose to have a large sample of
teachers1 . Yet, I wanted the sample to be big enough so that I could see a range of
differences among teachers and have some contrast. In the end, I chose to study three
teachers instead of two teachers because three teachers allow me to see more differences
than two teachers, and I felt I was less likely to create simple dichotomies.

I had interviewed nine teachers, including the three, whom people recommended
as having an orientation toward multiculturalism before I made the final decision about
who would be appropriate for this study. Some of the teachers might fit my
requirements, but lived a distance from me; some did not demonstrate that much interest
in multiculturalism as I talked to them. My requirements for selection were that the
teachers expressed commitments toward multiculturalism and believed that they
practiced their beliefs in their classrooms and that they demonstrated in my initial

interview with them that they had thought about multiculturalism in history. I did not

 

' Initially the study was designed to study two veteran teachers who were regarded as thoughtful and
committed teachers to multiculturalism. However, it turned out that the two teachers were not available.

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want to sort teachers based on particular views of multicultural history they have because
how teachers define multicultural history is what I would like to find out in this research.
At the same time, I wanted to study teachers who would demonstrate that they had
thought about what multiculturalism means to them rather than adopting it as a slogan.
This does not mean that I controlled what they believe about multiculturalism. It only
means that I wanted to study teachers who not only thought about multiculturalism in
history, but actually taught this in some way in their practice. My method is “theoretical
sampling” and the goal is to develop a theory as it emerges (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).
Below I will introduce the three teachers and explain why they were chosen and what
strength each brought to this study.

Lance was a 35-year veteran teacher who expressed strong commitment toward
anti-racism and democratic ideals. He was recommended by his colleague who knew
about my intention for this study; she believed that Lance was committed to
multiculturalism. In my interview with him, Lance said that he prefers to think of
multiculturalism as anti-racism. He also said that racism was always a theme in his class.
Before entering his class, Lance told me that his teaching style was lecturing with issue-
oriented discussions. He wanted to make sure that I would not be disappointed by the
kind of traditional teaching style that he chose to do. I was intrigued by his adoption of
the lecturing method and wondered what multiculturalism might mean in his class.

Whitney came to be a candidate for this study via an intern teacher. She had
consulted Whitney for advice in her social studies teaching and thought she had good
ideas about teaching. I called an education professor who had the experience of working

with Whitney and asked about his opinions about Whitney. He believed that Whitney

25

had commitments toward social justice. Then, I arranged an interview with her and
found her to be very thoughtful about multicultural issues regarding who is writing
history. Therefore, I decided to select Whitney as my subject.

Jerry was the last one referred to me by one of my committee members in the
proposal meeting. He was teaching Afro-American History and US. History at the time
and was a well-regarded teacher in his school. I talked with him in his classroom
noticing that he has decorated his walls with posters about different races and countries.
Jerry also struck me as a very thoughtful teacher who was mindful about multicultural
issues. It did not take long before I made the decision to include him in my study.

The teachers had learned about my purpose for this research. They knew that I
was doing a doctoral study, that I was conducting a study about multicultural teaching,
and that I needed teachers who had a commitment toward multiculturalism to be in my
study. The fact that teachers would accept the invitation to be my subjects suggests that

they saw themselves as multicultural practitioners.

Data Collection
During fall semester 1997, I collected the data for three months intensively. In
Spring 1998, I went back to Whitney’s class for a couple of weeks because she said that
she was doing something interesting and relevant to my study. Although the amount of
data collected for each teacher was uneven, I left each teacher’s classroom with a sense
that I had observed what: they normally did in class.
The data collection involved (1) semi-structured interviews, (2) non-participant

observation, and (3) pertinent classroom documents to describe the influences that shape

26

the kind of teaching occurring in their classrooms. These different sources of data
allowed me to rely on more than one source to construct an understanding about teachers’
beliefs and practices. Teachers’ beliefs could be obtained not only through interviews
with them, but also what they said and did in class and the kind of assignments they

required students to do. Below, I will describe in more detail about each data collection.

Interviews

Bogdan and Biklen (1992) said that interviewing is a better approach than
observation to obtain individuals’ perspectives. Because an assumption about this study
is that teachers’ beliefs and conceptions shape a lot of what they do in classrooms,
interviews became an important data source. Interviews were scheduled at the teacher’s
convenience. Often they took place after school in the teacher’s classroom, with some
during weekend in the school.

To interview the participants, I used a “general interview guide” approach (Patton,
1990). Each guide listed questions and probes stemming from the research questions (see
Appendices B, C for Interview Guides). The guides were designed to be flexible enough
for changes in question sequencing and to allow other relevant topics to emerge in the
interview. Using a more general, semi-guided interview technique helped the teachers
express what was on their minds from their perspectives.

There were several rounds of interviews throughout the data collection period. In
total, I interviewed each teacher six to nine times depending upon the length of time that I
Observed the teachers. The first interview was conducted at the beginning of the data

collection period before I entered the classrooms. It probed various aspects of

27

information pertaining to the teachers’ personal experiences and backgrounds, and some
of the teachers’ views about history, multicultural teaching, students, and purposes. The
goal of this initial interview was to broadly explore what teachers considered to be
involved in teaching history and things that might affect their decisions.

There were also pre- and post-observation interviews when I tried to probe
teachers’ thinking in relation to their classroom practices. Pre-observation interviews
were abandoned later on because of teachers’ time constraint and my feeling that post-
observation interviews yielded more information about what teachers did, how and why
they did what they did. Because my study was not to find out the difference between
what teachers planned and what they carried out, I judged that post-observation
interviews were sumcient for the purpose of this study. Those interviews were less
structured, but still probed questions based on the research questions. They aimed to
understand what was going on in the classroom and why the teacher did things the way
he or she did. Questions were teacher-specific and situation-dependent; however, I tried
to maintain some themes that I explored across cases. Those themes were: concepts of
history, pedagogy, students, and purposes. I probed those themes through asking them
questions like how they decided what contents to cover and what they anticipated to
accomplish by using a certain method or discussing a certain issue.

Their understanding and beliefs about students were explored through having
them describe their expectations about student learning and how they chose what topics
to cover and what instructional methods to use. Organizational expectations from
administrators and policies like testing were also explored to see if they help shape

teachers’ decisions about their curriculum and pedagogy in classrooms.

28

In the final interview, I asked teachers questions about national, state, and district
standards as well as different opinions surrounding the historical canon through showing
them my own summaries of the debates (see Appendix E for different viewpoints in
teaching multicultural history) to further understand their understanding about history as
well as their stances on what history should be in schools.

All the interviews were aimed at understanding more about the teachers’ views
about teaching history, students, knowledge, purposes, and sources of these beliefs and
knowledge. These interviews also served as references for classroom observation so that
the teachers’ views were situated and better understood in relation to their practices.

All the interviews were audiotaped with the teachers’ permission and then
transcribed by the researcher into hard copies (see Appendix A for Teachers’ Consent

Form).

Non-Participant Obsemtjgg

I asked the teachers when would be a good time for me to observe them teaching
history in a multicultural way. Lance and Whitney then identified one to two units or
topics that they believe to be most representative of how they address multicultural
issues. Jerry said that anytime is a good time to observe him teach multiculturalism. My
intention was to study units that the teachers believed could highlight their multicultural
teaching, and then study the unit(s) that went before or after the identified units to have a
sense of what the teacher normally does, not just what they believe they do well in
teaching multicultural history. According to Hammersley and Atkinson (1983),

In organizing this sampling time, it is as important to sample the routine as it
is to observe the extraordinary. The purpose of such systematic data

29

collection procedures is to ensure as full and representative a range of

coverage as possible, not just to identify and single out the superficially

‘interesting’ events. (p.49)
By studying units surrounding the target unit(s), I was able to see the extraordinary as
well as the ordinary events. I would be able to make sense of how the teacher perceive
multicultural teaching as a whole rather than specific incidents. How teachers treated
each unit shed light on how they view multicultural history teaching and how it fit with
their general approaches to American history. For each teacher I studied three to five
consecutive units so that I would be able to observe teaching in a more coherent and
contextual way. The length of a unit varies according to individual teachers. It ranges
from three days to two weeks. However, I did not always study each unit entirely, due to
time conflicts. However, I did not miss more than two days for a unit. When I missed a
lesson, I asked the teacher to describe for me what he or she did in class and how it would
lead to the lesson that I observed.

The teacher and I decided which class to observe. In Whitney’s case, I studied
the only US. history class she taught that year. In Jerry’s case, I studied one of the two
US. history classes that Jerry taught. Because he was mentoring an intern teacher and
had given her the most responsibility to teach one of the class, I observed the other one
that he taught. Lance taught five US. history classes. We chose one that was considered
by him to be an average class, and had a the schedule that would work for me as I tried to
study Whitney and Jerry around the same. In each case, the decision about what class to
observe was not made based on any Special characteristics of the class. I sat in each

teacher’s class to observe their teaching for ten to twenty lessons depending upon the

length of the target units, and whether I felt that I was seeing repetitions of patterns rather

30

than fundamentally new approaches to the teachers’ subjects. Before I conducted the
final interviews, I queried the teacher if they felt that I had seen what they normally
would do in class. And, when I found that I had been repeating the same kind of
questions or got the same kind of answers, I made the decision that the data were
sufiicient for my study.

Each time I observed the teacher’s teaching, I took written notes about their
instruction, student interaction, and classroom activities. There was an observation guide
that I designed based on the research questions I had (Appendix D); I used it as a
reminder to guide my Observation. Field notes were helpful and served as a reference
guide when I went back to listen to the tapes and tried to transcribe some of the
conversations that occurred. Field notes also helped as a way to maintain ongoing
analysis of my data. Off-site retrospective notes were written after observations and
interviews and became one of the data sources.

Each of the lessons was audiotaped, and only a few lessons were videotaped.
Depending upon whether the teacher was comfortable with video-tapes, I selectively
videotaped some lessons for the benefit of what videotapes can offer—a real image of the
classroom interaction and record that allowed multiple viewing. But, when the teacher
was not comfortable with the video as in Lance’s case, then I relied on audiotapes and

field notes as my observational data.

Documents

In addition to interviews and observations, I collected relevant documents that the

three teachers consulted or produced. During the time of observation, I made it clear to

31

teachers that I would be happy to see any documents that they believed would be helpful
to my \mderstanding of their teaching. Sometimes they volunteered a school newsletter,
or a worksheet that they produced that they thought would be helpful to me; sometimes,
upon my request, they shared with me the district’s standards that they paid some
attention to. In addition to those documents, student assignments of the particular units
that I observed were collected more systematically. Other documents collected include

their tests and worksheets.

Data Analysis

Data analysis involved the central questions that I set out to ask in Chapter 1.
Again, the major research questions are: (1) What and how do teachers who are
committed to “multiculturalism” teach about US. History? And, (2) In what ways do
teachers’ conceptions about the subject matter, assumptions about students, and purposes
of history teaching play roles in their decisions about curriculum and pedagogy and
mediation of their many goals?

My data analysis started before formal data analysis began. During the process of
data collection, I had observational comments written. Inforrnally, I also formed
hunches, ideas, and emergent concepts, which sometimes required me to collect more
data relevant to the ideas (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983). My formal data analysis
occurred in several stages. The first stage was the initial encounter with the data during
the period of data collection. I tried to transcribe each interview tape right after the
interview or to at least jot down main points that the teachers mentioned as references for

classroom observation. After each classroom observation, I also tried to write down

32

reflective notes by the side of the field notes and decided what kind of questions I would
pursue in the follow-up interviews. Sometimes, the post-observation interview occurred
right after the teacher was done with his/her teaching, then I would use the on-site
reflections to launch questions. I used the field notes as a way to guide my analysis of
the classroom interaction. For each observation, I reconstructed what happened based on
the field notes, audiotapes, and videotapes because the written notes were often sketchy,
catching the main events and ideas without recording clearly what the conversations were
about. Sometimes, I transcribed major lessons from the tape when there was a lot of
lecturing. During this first stage of analysis, I form hunches about the teachers’ beliefs
and practices.

The next stage of analysis began after data collection in Spring 1998. By this
time, I had finished my transcribing and reconstruction of the field notes based on the
audio- and video-tapes. I began then to find ways to handle both the interview and
observation data as well as student assignments, district guidelines, tests, and textbooks.
The interview data were the backbone of this data analysis. I used the interview data as
the anchor for understanding the teachers’ beliefs and reasons for what they did in the
classroom. After reading the teachers’ interviews, I began to form coding categories and
strategies to analyze the interview data and used the categories to examine observation
data and documents. In my first round of coding, I had very detailed categories found in
the interviews. I soon generated a long list of categories written on note papers. This
laborious work, however, did not seem to help me conceptualize the relationships
between the cases and within the cases. In “grounded theory” (Glaser & Strauss, 1967),

the purpose of data analysis is to “discover categories and their properties and to suggest

33

the interrelationships into a theory” (p. 106). My first attempt to categorize failed to
recognize emerging theory and relationships. I started the second round of coding. I
used index cards on which I wrote down quotes or descriptions of each teacher’s ideas
without categorizing them. For each teacher, I had a big pile of index cards. Then, I
began to read through the index cards and tried different ways to categorize them.
Bogdan and Biklen (1992) said, “particular research questions and concerns generate
certain categories. Certain theoretical approaches and academic disciplines suggest
particular coding schemes” (p.166). 1 found myself having categories that were in line
with my conceptual frameworks, e. g. teaching and learning and conception of history.
There were categories that may not directly relate to the research questions; they were,
however, important contextual categories such as personal backgrounds, experiences, and
academic training. My coding started from the initial elaborate and more random kind of
categories to more focused and theory-driven categories is a process of “progressive
focusing” in ethnographic studies (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983).

Other people’s early input also influenced and contributed to my analysis. I
shared my coding categories with my advisor who had also read my interview data. She
wanted me to read the interviews through without interruption and without jotting down
notes so that I may not be biased by my own preconceptions. She also wanted me to
open to patterns and regularities that I had not anticipated. My sharing of the preliminary
case writing to one of my committee members also helped me see things that I had not
paid much attention to. He pointed out how it seemed that from the data that I presented
to him the teachers’ subject matter knowledge had powerful impact on the teachers’

multicultural teaching. Because subject matter knowledge was not in my research

34

question, I had not categorized it. I then went back to the data and systematically coded
things that are relevant to the teachers’ subject matter knowledge.

I used the same kind of coding strategy and similar categories with each teacher.
Patterns began to emerge across cases. Although each case has similar patterns and
categories, when I wrote the cases, I tried to bring out the characteristic of each case and
highlight what the teacher stressed in their teaching. Therefore, in each case, emphasis
was different. The similar patterns noticed across cases were later on the categories for

comparing and analyzing the cases.

What I Brought into this Study
As a qualitative researcher, I do not claim to be neutral in researching the
questions that I asked. My concern about multicultural education has its intellectual and
emotional roots. My intellectual history was a journey that led me to this very issue of
multicultural history teaching in schools. Along with my intellectual journey as a
graduate student in the US. was my emotional concern for multicultural history teaching.
Those subjective experiences and values shaped the kind of questions that I was

interested in and the kind of analysis I went about doing.

Intellectual Journey
My intellectual interest in history education dated to my early graduate study
years when I began to think about the questions of objectivity of knowledge and our
historical understanding. My work with Bill McDiarmid who then directed the National

Center for Research on Teacher Learning has decided my future interest in history

35

education. My frameworks were largely influenced by Lee Shulman and his colleagues’
works which pursued the questions of teachers’ knowledge base and its influence on
teaching and learning (Grossman, Wilson, & Shulman, 1989; Shulman, 1987; Shulman,
1986; Wilson, Shulman, & Richert, 1987; Wilson & Wineburg, 1988; Wineburg, 1991;
Wineburg & Wilson, 1991).

This line of research was exciting to me because it explores the nature of the
history discipline, something fundamental to the historical inquiry and historians’ work.
However, over time I was increasingly dissatisfied by this line of research. These works
did not deal with issues of race, gender, and class, and ideological orientations of
teachers. Although in their writings they frequently discussed the interpretive nature of
history, their frameworks virtually bypassed dimensions of race, gender and class in
historical knowledge construction. When talking about what sort of knowledge teachers
need, the authors might give examples of the American Revolution pointing out how
important it is that teachers provide the British perspective and the colonists’ perspective
(Wilson, 1988; Wineburg, 1991). Their intellectual interest was not in how race, gender,
and class play roles in historical construction, hence, without specifying their ideological
commitment, their de-fault topics were European American (Grossman, 1990; Wilson,
1988; Wineburg, 1991).

In Kennedy’s (1991) edited book Teaching Academic Subjects of Diverse
Learners, the editor included Suzanne Wilson and James Banks to discuss history/social
studies teaching (Banks, 1991; Wilson, 1991). Kennedy noted that Wilson concentrated
on teaching history as “not a list of names and dates, but instead a way of trying to

understand events, one that uses particular methods of inquiry and is guided by particular

36

rules of evidence, but that yields multiple and evolving interpretations” (Kennedy, 1991,
p.97). Compared with Wilson’s view, Kennedy said that Banks’ view reminded us that
social values and cultural perspectives are inescapable parts of social sciences. For
example, history tends to focus on white European males while anthropology tends to
focus on other groups. Recognizing the difierent views in social studies education,
Kennedy argued that “because each social science is imbued not only with its own
methodology and content but also with its own perspective, teachers need both to
understand and to teach these subjects together rather than separately” (p.97). I agree
with Kennedy’s comment. Hence, in doing this study, I developed research questions
that meant to explore the cultural aspects of history teaching and how teachers perceive
it. And, I derived conceptual frameworks from the knowledge base tradition studying
teachers’ conceptions of history, knowledge, beliefs about teaching and learning which in
that line of research tradition tend not to explore teachers’ ideological commitments.

My study combines the two traditions together through the kind of questions I
asked and the conceptual frameworks I adopted. In doing this, I found the strength of this
study being using the less ideologically-driven tradition of knowledge base studies to
examine multicultural history teaching. It focuses on what conception of knowledge and
multicultural history teachers hold and how they approach history teaching in ways that
correspond to historians’. At the same time, the weakness of such approach is that I do
not use race, gender, and social class as major frameworks to examine teachers’ beliefs
and practices which make the discussions less critical about the imbedded ideologies of
multicultural teaching. For example, although I did have in mind race, gender and class

as important concepts in examining perspectives, I did not focus on analyzing teachers’

37

conceptions of race, gender, and class, or other categories of differences.

Emotional_Concem

As I embarked on my intellectual journey during my graduate study years, I was
struggling emotionally with what it means to be Taiwanese. I came from Taiwan, and I
was educated as a Chinese. My history was full of the Chinese perspective, and I took
that as the Truth; and, I did not realize that until I came to the US. Leaving home made
me realize how little I knew about the land that I lived on and the people with whom I
associated. Particularly, I knew so little about the land’s and its peoples’ history.

People wonder why I would be interested in a very “American topic” for my
dissertation research. There are two major reasons for this inquiry. One is my interest in
understanding more about the US. society, since I have grown to have some attachment
toward this country where I spent my mid twenties and early thirties, an important part of
my life. The other is that I believe that by studying the US, I would be smarter about
the issue of multicultural history teaching in my country and others in the world. With
the migration of peoples in the world and democratic movements in different countries,
teaching the past democratically is not a local issue, nor one entirely unique to a single
place. It would have the US characteristics, but I believe that there should be lessons
that I could draw upon later when I do Taiwanese studies.

The US. has already helped me rethink what a nation means and what being a
citizen of a diverse country means. The notion was not clear to me as a Taiwanese and I
think Taiwanese people are just beginning to define and redefine their national identity.

They need and will have to do more of this kind of thinking for two reasons. One is that

38

the people are still confronting with the question of who they are as a people. There are
“Wai-Sheng-Ren” (Chinese mainlanders who came to the island after 1949), “Ben-
Sheng-Ren” (“native” Taiwanese whose ancestors came from the south eastern provinces
of China) and indigenous peoples in Taiwan who interacted in history, but whose past
experiences are by no means the same. Yet until recently, Taiwan’s history books tell a
past from the mainland Chinese perspective. It was the historical canon in Taiwan, and
not until well into the 90’s did the historical narrative begin to be challenged (Wu, 1994;
Xue, 1996). BeCause of the democratization movement2 in Taiwan, other groups of
people began to demand that their voices be heard. The other reality in Taiwan is that
foreigners are now allowed to Obtain permanent residency and citizenship in Taiwan.
When more foreign workers from Southeastern Asia come to work in Taiwan and the
society becomes increasingly diverse, similar issues that the US. and other countries face
may begin to appear in Taiwan. Taiwan is relatively unprepared for the change in the
society. Cultural diversity has not yet appeared to be a crucial educational issue. My
hunch is that it will soon become an issue when the democratic movement continues in
Taiwan.

In 1994 an indigenous social activist was invited by the Taiwanese Collegian, a
student organization across major college campuses in America, to talk about Taiwan’s
indigenous people’s fight for social justice to local Taiwanese students. I asked the
speaker what did the indigenous peoples want and how should their fight for cultural
survival be done. He replied, “we want cultural hegemony.” I was struck and asked, “is

it the solution? Why your cultural hegemony, not others?” The speaker smiled and

 

2 In 1987, the government of Taiwan lifted its martial law allowing free press, speech, and association.

39

seemed to ponder over the question as well. I have kept this question in mind. Over the
years, I have found that multiculturalism seems to open up opportunities to minorities’
desires for their human rights and cultural survival. I want to know what teachers do in
classrooms in response to multiculturalism. This research is part of my journey to
become clear about the complex question of equality and educating about equality in

culturally diverse societies and eventually the world.

40

CHAPTERHI

LANCE: DEMOCRATIC BELIEFS, LECTURING AND THE MASTER
NARRATIVE OF U.S. HISTORY

Lance is a white, 35-year veteran teacher at Dutchville, a suburban high school in
a mid-west city with fewer than five students of color in the school. Lance described
himself as someone who valued democracy and “tended to stress areas of civil rights,

” 661’

race relations, cultural and religious differences and ethnic factors. ve always tried to
stress those a lot more than probably a lot of other people do,” he said. Compared with
most teachers, Lance believed that he teaches far fewer wars and battles than issues
related to civil rights and the Constitution, basic democratic concepts of freedom and
equality. Lance described the community he serves: “we are in a community here where
it’s pretty much a white middle-class community where they are not very sympathetic to
those things [such as talking about racism and discrimination].” Lance said this to reveal
the fact that his value is at odds with many of the people in the community. “Most of
their upbringing and most of the students I have are going to be the more conservative
point of view on all that. And, so I think they needed to perhaps hear or deal with some
of the other points of view about the impact of racism in our society,” said Lance
expressing that he would like to have an impact on students’ thinking.

When Lance was in college in the 60’s majoring in history, he witnessed events
that went on in the changing society during the time. Like many history majors of his

time, his college history curriculum did not help him understand causes of the civil rights

movement]. In college, he took primarily what he called, “standard2 U.S. history,” and

 

‘ Beginning in late 60’s, college courses gradually came to have some ethnic studies and cultural studies
that look at the past from the perspective of the silenced (Thompson & Tyagi, 1993).

41

European history. These courses did not help him become a teacher with a commitment
to anti-racism, a term he prefers to use rather than multiculturalism, but the social
movements in the 60’s did. Asked what influenced his teaching on multicultural history,
Lance said,
I think what had an influence was when I went to college and the 60’s came
around and because the 60’s was a time of change, turmoil in this country
through the civil rights movement, the women’s movement and the anti-war
movement. And, all those things that occurred at that time had a profound
impact on me. I really looked into those things. That is what probably
formed a lot of my opinions about things. One of them was that we were
indeed a very strong racist society. That didn’t take much, it seems to me, to
figure that out. Racism was firmly ingrained in the American psyche.
Lance expressed how the movements in the 60’s affected his views about civil rights and
unequal treatments to certain groups of people. His teaching is influenced by this
experience and that when possible, he stresses the concepts of racism and civil rights.
What is intriguing about Lance is that although he stresses democratic principles of
freedom and equality and the idea of basic civil rights to all people, he is not necessarily
teaching history in a way that transforms the existing Euro-centric perspectives. Lance’s
conceptualization of an anti-racism curriculum is not one that examines different
perspectives and try to understand different peoples’ historical experiences. Lance does
not think that he will go into details of the experiences of the minorities and their
perspectives. His conception of U.S. history is the traditional Eurocentric political
history, which is called by him as “standard history,” “hard history” or “straight history”

that all students need to know. Teaching multiculturalism in Lance’s perspective is to

teach concepts of anti-racism and civil rights.

 

’ The term “standard” is used by Lance to mean the U.S. curriculum that schools commonly taught, which
tends to be political and military history.

42

Why does Lance teach the way he does in response to the call for multicultural
education? It appears that his conception of history, including the way he envisions for a
democratic society, beliefs about teaching and learning and his purposes for history
teaching shape his multicultural practices. In this chapter, I describe and explain these
different dimensions of his beliefs. And, then, his approaches to teaching are described
and analyzed. Finally, I provide perspectives to think about Lance’s case as it sheds light

on multicultural history teaching.

Conception of History

One way to understand Lance’s conception of history is through his practice in
the classroom. In teaching, Lance is selective about historical accounts. He does not like
most textbooks because he thinks that they tend to be trivial and not conceptual. He is
also skeptical about Hollywood-made historical movies because most of them are
“overdone” and “sensational” rather than historically accurate. Lance prefers to give
students lecture presentations and lay out foundational historical knowledge for students
before he spends time discussing current issues with them or showing videos.

During one of my observations, Lance showed a video called “Andersonville,” a
southern prison camp in the Civil War where nearly 13,000 Union prisoners died of
malnutrition, exposure, and disease. Before showing the movie, Lance had covered the
concept of corruption and inhumanity in wars. The purpose of watching the movie was
not to analyze the video as a historical account. The movie was shown because students
were complaining to him that he had covered too much contents. A student brought in

the video and Lance agreed to show it. Asked if he would debrief the video with

43

students, Lance said that he would not. “I think we’ve laid pretty good ground work for
Andersonville,” said Lance. “I see films in most cases as a supplement as that once
we’ve covered it, just like the Andersonville, we’ve covered it. Now here is a movie to
embellish it,” he said. The historical concept as revealed through Lance’s teaching is that
there is an account that he considers to be accurate and that is the account that students
Should learn. Other accounts, such as video accounts, are used to highlight his main
points rather than to be posed as alternative interpretations or examples from which to
examine imbedded point of views.

In general, Lance believes that history is more than just textbook accounts. In his
view, historical fictions like Gone with the Wind, newspapers, Grapes of Wrath, and the
Autobiography of Malcolm X are all history. They are history because “they are about
people in advance, they are about time, and what went on in certain time, whether it be
now or newspaper, or Gone with the Wind.” Although Gone with the Wind is a fiction, it
has “a lot of historical facts or at least information behind.” “It’s really based on
historical happening, based on what went on at a time period in our history... It also
gives us a pretty good understanding of the cultural aspects of the South too,” said Lance.
It appears that Lance appreciates the different historical fictions and personal accounts
that are available. He said, “[Gone with the Wind] is also in a form that people will take a
book like that, read it, and kind of enjoy it, want to read it, want to finish it.”

In principle, Lance recognizes that subjective views are involved in historical
interpretations. When talking about the validity and reliability of historical accounts,
Lance said, “Well, it’s always difficult and as we said, there is a bias in reporting, there is

emotionalism, hidden agendas, and so on. Ideally you are supposed to get as many

44

primary sources as you can and so on and try to make sure you avoid that.” Lance
recognizes that being objective “is not always easy to do.” “There usually is [bias]. It’s
true with Herodotus, the Greek historian. I mean there was a concern [that] he wasn’t
very Objective. That’s probably true to a lot of them (historians),” said Lance. Asked if
all history is somewhat biased, Lanced answered, “yes, I don’t know how you can avoid
that.”

It appears that Lance’s articulated understanding about the nature of history is that
there is more than one account in history and that history could be presented in different
forms. He also recognizes that there are biases involved in historical accounts. However,
perspectives and interpretations do not seem to play important roles in his curriculum.
For example, Lance is aware that there are different interpretations of the Civil War and
Reconstruction, topics that he teaches. However, when he teaches, he wanted to teach his
version of Civil War and Reconstruction. Knowing that there are difi‘erent interpretations
of the Civil War and Reconstruction, Lance believes that his is a “balanced” or less
biased one that he can “kind of trust [his] interpretation to at least help kids understand
some things without being maybe totally biased.” How much the issue of slavery played
a role in the Civil War is not without debate among historians (Rozwenc, 1963; Simpson,
1989). Even though there is a competing version of the Civil War as a war about slavery,
Lance said, ”I don’t think it was that much about slavery myself... I think it was about
other things. . .industrial society vs. agricultural, state-rights vs. federal authority and
federal power, those state rights issue, and the tarifi‘ issue.” He makes sure that students
get his point. When teaching about the causes of the Civil War, Lance told students, “we

tried to cover that slavery is not the only issue” and that other economic and political

45

issues had more to do with the buildup of the war.
Lance desires to teach students what he sees as the better version or the right
version of history, which is linked to a pedagogy that is lecture-based. As a result,
interest in teaching more about different perspectives and experiences is dwarfed. It is
not that the theories that Lance taught are wrong since there is not a definitive answer to
the causes of the Civil War3. But, the way Lance taught them conveyed a sense that he is
passing on to students the Truth about the past. Lance told students about events as well
as giving explanations in a tone that suggested to students that the story is told as it is.
For example, Lance told students the significance of Lincolns’ address at Gettysburg is
his “forgiving attitude” and his philosophy to not let the Union break apart. He then said,
O.K., so, the Lincoln attitude is here in the Gettysburg Address, we can
understand why it’s important. He’s gonna try to pursue that idea in post-war
policy. Now, unfortunately, he is assassinated. And, that’s gonna be a real
loss and ironically it’s probably gonna be the loss for the South too because he
wanted to be easy on them. He’s gone, they are gonna be real hard on the
South. They actually lost a friend and they thought he was a real enemy. But,
still, this address is part of Lincoln and the Civil War. Is that clear?

In the lecture, students had a sense of who Lincoln was as a leader, what kind of attitude

he had toward the South, and the effect of his assassination had on the South. Lance told

it coherently and tried to ensure that students got the story at the end.

Lance has a master narrative conception of U.S. history. His lecture format and
teacher-centered instruction, which I describe and discuss later, work with his master

narrative conception of history. Multicultural history advocates would like the U.S.

history to be more inclusive and accurate. They would like to have a new history written

3 Bailyn (1994) pointed out that large subjects in history can never be definitively written. He said, “There
is no definitive history of the Civil War, and there never will be. Such a vast, complex event lends itself to
a series of questions that is endless, and those questions are phrased and rephrased, generation after
generation, according to contemporary interests (p.67)."

46

with different groups included, however, epistemologically, multicultural scholars like
James Banks (1993) and Alan Singer (1992, 1993) would not like history to be taught as
if it were the Truth. They emphasize teaching students about the value-laden and
constructive nature of history. Multicultural history challenges the established
mainstream account to claim that ordinary people also have stories to tell. Therefore,
when teachers hold a master narrative view, which is usually an European American
view, it is a challenge to authentic multicultural history teaching.

Lance has been teaching history for 35 years; according to him the current
curriculum he is using has not changed for some years. It is mostly about the country’s
alleged democratic values and political development, a traditional and Euro-centric
account about the U.S. past. Through discussing his notions of connecting the past to the
present, I will Show how Lance constructed a U.S. history that tries to address its
multicultural past within the national history framework through telling a political
history, one that discusses civil rights, but lacks voices from ethnic minorities. Lance
shows us how difficult it is to implement multicultural history when a teacher believes

that it is also very important for students to have a basic national narrative.

History a_s Policy and Politics
One of the concepts that Lance kept referring to when talking about history is the
idea that history enables us to understand what goes on in today’s society. Asked what
comes to mind when he thinks about the word “history,” Lance said that “just there has
been a past, a pattern, we need to understand how we got from point A to point B, what

has gone before has an effect on what we are today, and to try to develop an

47

understanding of tha .” History is about causality. Without the connection between the
past and present, one would not be able to comprehend what is going on in our lives and
the world (Becker, 1932). Or, without an account or explanation of what happened and
why things are the way they are, one does not know how to function in an intelligent
way.

The sense-making about the past and present to Lance is linked through the lenses
of politics and policies, which is Lance’s background in college (political and military
history). Asked if he does different things in different classes, Lance said,

Let’s just try to answer it this way. I see the subject matter as a kind of base
that you operate from. O.K.? We are gonna do some history, we’re gonna do
some hard history, we’re gonna keep that there, we’re gonna keep going, and
we’re gonna cover, but from that we’re gonna go up in different directions, try
to use that to understand a lot of issues, whether it’s social, political, current,
past, whatever.
Lance believes that students need background knowledge in order to understand what
happened in the past and today’s society. As a teacher, he aims to provide students the
background knowledge so that students may be able to understand things from there.
There is a “hard history” that all students should know, no matter what backgrounds they
have.

Asked what he meant by “hard history,” Lance replied that “just what I have
outlined here” (see Table I & H). He continued,

We are going to cover certain specific things in American history from
Presidents to elections to foreign policy to domestic affairs and so on, just like
the outline having. We’re gonna use that. I’m gonna cover that because that’s
what I call straight history, but we all know that they are not gonna
understand or even always know all that, you know they are not gonna
remember even a lot of things, but you could somehow get it to the big

picture, the concept, understanding of what has happened and why we’re
where we are now.

48

From Lance’s perspective, the basic structure of the history subject matter is the political
and military history that has characterized the American history. In order to understand
American history, students should know some specifics from Presidents, elections,
foreign policies, to domestic affairs. Those are the basics that Lance believes that as a
teacher he has to help students understand in order to help them get to the big picture of
U.S. history. The big picture as implied in Lance’s statements is the political
development of the nation’s history.

Lance would lecture to students the foundational knowledge. Lance’s lecture
often has big ideas; he makes connections for students. For example, when teaching
about the Civil War, Lance talked about a draft law and how rich people in the North
tried to dodge the war by finding substitutes and legal loopholes; the South even passed a
law that said that if your family owned a plantation and you had twenty or more slaves, a
male in your family could be exempted from the draft. “Imagine that! We talk about the
rich man’s war and the poor man’s fight,” Lance made his point to students. He also
tried to make the connection to the drafi in the Vietnam War and how the draft laws
discriminated against the poor and the less educated. In his lectures, there is a clear logic
to how he views an event. Lance’s teaching is conceptual in the sense that the knowledge
he provides to students is organized in ways that he pulls out important points to teach to
students. Therefore, instead of having students remember dates of battles fought in the
Civil War, he wanted students to have a basic time flame and important causes for the
Civil War. However, in Lance’s definition of U.S. history, social histories or stories
about ethnic minorities are not the core of U.S. history. Hence, fewer topics are devoted

to those groups of people.

49

Typically, Lance covers a big topic (see Table I & II) every one to two weeks.
The sub-topics are the contents that he will cover within the one- to two-week period of
time. Asked when would be a good time for me to observe his multicultural teaching,
Lance answered that Reconstruction during the first semester, and civil rights movement
during the 60’s in the second semester would be the units for observing him focusing on
racism and civil rights. There are other topics like immigration, women’s rights, and
Indian policies that he includes in his curriculum. Because he spends only one to two
weeks for each unit, time for each topic is limited. For the unit on Reconstruction that I

observed, Lance spent four days covering the content.

Table I

(Note: Topics in boldface represent topics related to multiculturalism in my judgement in
Lance’s curriculum)

 

U.S. History
lSt Sem., Pre-Civil War to WWI 1820- 1 91 8

 

 

 

 

I. Issues in America: 1800-1850

a. Land policy

b. Indian policy

0. Slavery

d. Tariff

e. States rights

f. Religion

g. Immigration

h. Social issues

11. Sectionalism, Expansion, Slavery

a. Missouri compromise

b. Abolitionist movement

c. Slavery as a political issue, racism and effects
(1. Free soil and republican parties

e. Mexican war and Manifest Destiny

f. Congromise of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Dred Scott, Bleeding Kansas
III. Causes of the Civil War

a. States rights

b. Tariff

 

 

50

 

Economic differences

Political power

Slavery-Lincoln, Republicans and Democrats
Election of l860-Outbreak of Civil War

 

Emcee

. The American Civil War
Northern Attitude, Southern Motivation
Advantages, both sides, compare to other wars
War in the East and West, Strategies
Battles and Turning points, Bull Run to Appomattox, Sherman’s March
Politics and behind the war effort

 

Reconstruction Period

Lincoln’s Plan

Radical Republicans

Martial law and the South-Freedman’s Bureau
Effects of Reconstruction on Blacks and the nation
Segregation, KKK, Plessy vs. Ferguson

Hands off policy

Post war corruption; effects of the war

 

 

I. U.S. 1865-1900 Political, Economic, and Social issues
Indian policy, effects
Western expansion—“Wild West”
Farmers, free silver, populist party
Workers and labor unions
Railroad, big business, trusts
Social issues, women, segregation
Urbanization and city politics
. The Gilded Age
VII. Foreign Affairs 1865-1900

. Isolation and imperialism
Expansion-Hawaii
Spanish American War, Cuba-Philippines
Big stick policy, Roosevelt Corollary
China and Asia-Spheres and Influence
Boxer Rebellion, Open door policy
Immigration
. Progressive Movement
Populism and reform-political change
Role of government
Trusts, Conservation, Consumer Protection
Democratic reforms, tariff
. Women’s nflrts, political reforms

. WW1 and U.S.
Isolation-Causes of war (Europe)
Causes of American involvement
Wilson 14 points
Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations

 

F___—=‘q°:-ms=-9 9‘.» «192-ha 9.0 .cra<:a.o-.° 9‘s»

 

51

 

Table H

 

U.S. History—20a1 Century 1920-Present
2”‘1 Semester

 

A. America 1920’s
1. Normalcy & Harding election, scandals
((a) Mood of the country
2. Red scare, KKK, democratic principles
3. Prohibition & problems
4. Prosperity, roaring 20’s, Coolidge
5. Fundamentalism, farm problems
6. Hoover & prosperity, Harlem Renaissance
7. Causes of Depression-stock market
(a) Description of Depression
b) Election 1932
B. America l930’s—Depression
1. F.D.R. & The New Deal, philosophy
2. Pump priming & government involvement
(a) Government programs; NRA, C.C.C., WPA, social security, T.V.A., A.A.A., and
others
(b) Pro & con, New Deal programs
3. Roosevelt & power? The supreme court
4. Evaluation of the New Deal
5. Foreign policy—good neighbor policy; Russia & U.S.
6. War build up, Hitler, Nazi’s
IC. World War II & America
1. Neutrality, cash & carry, lend lease
2. Peal Harbor, American involvement
3. War in Europe & Asia
4. Home front during war—conditions
5. Wars end, Atomic bomb, Yalta Conference
16. Cold War begins; policy changes

 

 

D. Post war domestic policy
1. Truman & policies—demobilization
2. Economic problems, price controls, strikes
3. GI. Bill, Taft-Hartley Act
4. Senator McCarthy-Red Scare
5. Fair Deal-Civil Rights
'6. Election l948—Dixiecrats
E. Eisenhower-Domestic policy 1950’s
1. Modern Republicanism-Middle of the road philosophy-Election 1952
2. Issues-1950’s
(a) Labor unions-power, corruption, Labor Act
) Peace & prosperity, materialism & the 1950’s, movement to suburbs

 

52

 

 

(c) Civil Rights, Brown vs. Board of Education (Supreme Court), forced integration,
resistance, Little Rock Montgomery (Bus Boycott), Martin L. King

 

F. Post war foreign policy-1945-1960
1. Cold War-Containment, Soviet Union
(a) Berlin-Germany, Poland
(b) NATO, Marshall Plan, Truman Doctrine
(c) Korean War, Causes & Policy UN.
(1) Differences-Korea & Vietnam
((1) China, Mao Tse Tung, Chiang Kai-Shek Communist China and Taiwan
(e) Middle East-Wars, Suez Canal
fLU—Z Incident, Arms race

 

fG. Kennedy & Johnson, U.S., 1960’s

1. Election 1960, Nixon-Kennedy-debates

2. Kennedy & New Frontier, issues and proposals, Medicare, space, and civil rights

3. Assassination? Speculation & facts?

4. LB]. Great Society; Passing of Kennedy issue-Civil Rights Act 1964. Pollution, war
on poverty, government spending

5. Foreign affairs, 1960’s

(a) Vietnam War

(b) History & background, French

(c) U.S. involvement, containment domino theory, problems & controversy, different
points of view, failure & why? Nixon Plan-Election 1968

((1) Counter culture, drugs, hippies, protest, hypocrisy; civil rights, anti-war, women’s
movement

 

 

H. Nixon Administration-U.S. 1970’s

1. War’s end—pro & con success or failure?

2. Revenue sharing, wage & price controls energy problem (oil prices), China policy
3. Watergate scandal

(a) Tactics, plumbers, dirty tricks, President’s men & why? Tapes & Nixon, resignation
4. Ford administration-Pardon, inflation, energy

5. Carter administration

(1) Energy, inflation, political experience

(2) Middle East-Egypt-Peace

(3)1ran-Hostages, Shaw

(4) Economic problems, unemployment

 

 

1. Election 1980, Reagan administration 80’s
1. Government spending, cuts, budget, inflation
2. Foreign policy-military build up-defense

3. Cold War, Arms race

4. Iran-Contra, Latin America & U.S.

 

 

The list that Lance produced delineates the country’s political and military events.

Although Lance rarely uses the textbook and had said that he thought that most textbooks

53

 

are no good, the chronology and topics that he covers resemble mainstream textbooks. In
some ways, it is even more traditional than many textbooks that started to include topics
on minorities and women (F itzGerald, 1979). Presidents, leadership, policies and politics
are the organizing themes for the narrative of the American history for Lance. They help
him connect the past with the present through the lenses of mainstream policy and
politics that do not represent voices of ethnic minorities.

Lance has taught high school for 35 years and said that he does not need to
prepare for his lessons, and that he can “pretty much do it” through lectures and
spontaneous class discussions. Asked if he were to design a different curriculum, what
topics would he consider to include, Lance pondered the possibility. And then, instead of
considering to restructure the curriculum, Lance thought about the possibility of adding
new topics in the 90’s. “But, it’s almost impossible timewise; I mean I am having a hard
time just covering all these,” Lance said eventually. The topics that he outlined are
considered by him as the foundation of the American history. The narrative is relatively
set. It’s a story for the major part about presidency and political events.

Lance’s chronology of U.S. history does not include topics related to Hispanic
Americans or Asian Americans. Immigration is only mentioned in pre-Civil War period
and late 19005. In his teaching, the focus on immigration was on factual information
about which immigrant groups, where they came from, and why they came. There is no
mention of nativism and laws that discriminate against the Chinese or other Asians, nor is
there mention of immigrants who came after the 1950’s as refugees and the elimination
of race as a factor in immigration. The most salient appearance of non-White people in

Lance’s curriculum are African Americans in topics of slavery, Reconstruction and civil

54

rights movement, and American Indians in topics of Indian policies in the 19Lb century.
They have more exposure than other ethnic groups, yet they only appear in certain
historical periods when there are problems with regard to the groups and failed policies.
For example, Native Americans appeared in Trail of Tears and Afiican Americans during
times when the Americans deal with issues of racism and violation of civil rights. While
addressing problems is necessary, presenting histories related to non-White ethnic groups
as historical incidents fails to present the groups as networks of people whose
experiences have a history as well. Wills and Mehan’s (1996) study reports that even
when teachers who try to teach slavery in complicated ways using multiple resources to
help students, for example, put themselves in enslaved Afiicans’ shoes, students do not
see the connection between slavery and present issues of racism. The authors argued that
because students only learn about Afiican Americans during the Civil War, they do not
have a coherent view about what was in the past and what is going on today (Wills &
Mehan, 1996a). A master narrative that is based on a particular group tends to fuse other
stories into the narrative in such a way that others’ pasts are rendered disconnected and
fragmented.

Because Lance has a strong commitment to teaching what he believes to be the
core knowledge of U.S. history, he is limited by time as well as by the narrative structure
to tell others’ experiences in some depth. Minorities are mentioned in his lectures when
topics are related to concepts of inequality and discrimination. Lance’s conception of
U.S. history as mainstream political history and as a Euro-centric master narrative or core
history has his intellectual roots in his belief about U.S. democracy and vision for

achieving it.

55

History as Told from Mainstream Democratic Perspective

Lance’s definition of multicultural history is built upon his ideas of what America
is about and how these ideas should be imparted to students. Asked what his purposes
for high school history teaching are, Lance responded,

Well, to try to come to some understanding as to what America is all about,
what our government means, our Constitution, and our history, and how we
try to put that in practice, how we were unique, what we’ve done successfully,
by the same token, what we’ve done and hasn’t been so successful, to
hopefully to get them to understand the meaning of the Constitution, the Bill
of Rights, how you implement them, to understand some policies, some
leadership, and who leaders were, what effects they had, what is effective
leadership for example, some analysis, some of those people.

When Lance said that his purpose of teaching history is to help students
understand how America is “unique” in the world, he was referring to the American
democracy. “We say we’re unique as the really true democracy that developed through
the integration and our Constitution; that made us different,” said Lance. Lance’s
statement reveals that the way to understand the American democracy is through learning
about what leaders did and how effective policies were. Asked who the leaders are,
Lance answered, “mostly Presidents.” This explains why Lance’s outline of U.S. history
is a chronological sequence of presidential elections and administrations. This version of
history has dominated the mainstream curriculum for years. Elite whites are agents of
change in the evolution of democracy. They did wrong things, and they changed to make
a better world. However, in recent years, because of the call for multiculturalism, more
non—white and non-elite topics are added to the curriculum. Different ethnic groups of
people experienced the American democracy differently; their struggle for equality has
helped shape the American democracy. Lance does not seem to perceive history in ways

56

 

to include other voices. In practice, when teaching about Reconstruction, blacks were
mainly described as victims by Lance. Black people’s efforts to build the democratic
institutions in the South were ignored in his presentation of Reconstruction (F oner, 1990).
There is an intellectual reason why Lance tells the story the way he does. Lance
said that he does not get into histories of different groups of people in the U.S. “I think I
get into the other aspects of what America is supposed to stand for philosophically
through Constitution, and the rights of people, and respect for cultures and so on,” he
said. Lance thinks that teaching history from different groups’ points of view would be
like “getting into some of the social aspects or the side effects [of events], and so on,
based on racial groups or whatever, and leave it at that.” He said, “I don’t think I do
that.” He also said that he is not going to “do a whole unit on different ethnic groups,
Hispanics, and Asians, and people who came here, immigrants, Native Americans, and so
on, and make sure they all kind of get equal treatment.” “I’m kind of not gonna do that in
much depth,” he said. He seems to be concerned over losing the center and coherence of
U.S. history if alternative stories are told. In addition, Lance is not sure about how to
teach ethnic experiences and relate them to the body of the story. He is concerned about
teaching an event based on racial groups and “leave it at that.” This is a legitimate
concern. Teaching a coherent and inclusive history is difficult when historians have not
yet been able to write such a history. (I discuss the narrative problem in chapter 6). The
dilemma is that when history is construed as one coherent account based on the dominant
group’s experience that is presented as indisputable, then teaching others’ stories to

maintain a coherent narrative is problematic.

Lance prefers to talk about concepts like discrimination and respecting different

57

cultures in general, rather than going into details about teaching ethnic groups’
experiences and treating ethnic groups as agents of historical action. Part of the reason is
that Lance is concerned about narrative incoherence in his representing of U.S. history.
Part of the reason is Lance’s particular understanding of cultural diversity. Our
conversation about his ethnic backgrounds reveals his understanding about what it means
to be American, which explains part of Lance’s orientation toward teaching multicultural
history:
Interviewer: What is your ethnicity?
Lance: Well, I’m just a German American, I guess. My ancestors are
Germans. That goes quite a way back. So, I’m really just a mid-
westem American.
Interviewer: Mid-westem American? Your family have been in...

Lance: Yea, I’ve been here long enough for a difference. It’s not a factor.
Interviewer: Not a factor of?

Lance: Well, I’m not part of any ethnic group other than an American,
you know. I mean I don’t, there’s no ethnic connection with my
ancestors.

Implicit in the above conversation is Lance’s view of what it means to be an
American. Americans are those people with no ethnic affiliations. His attitude toward
ethnic diversity seems to spell out mainstream white people’s feelings toward ethnic
identities and experiences. White Americans generally do not think that they have
ethnicity. It is because historically white immigrants assimilated to the mainstream
American society and the melting-pot worked pretty well for them (Hu-DeHart, 1993).

Lance’s liberal view of American democracy is that teaching individual freedom,
constitutional principles, and civil rights will allow him to treat every individual and
group equally. However, “the history of individual choice and freedom, and of
democracy, unfortunately does not speak to the reality that most of them (people of color)

and their predecessors in America have experienced” (Hu-DeHart, 1993, p.11). “Bluntly

58

put, these ‘other’ Americans have lived another history,” said Hu-DeHart (1993, p.9).
Multiculturalists and recent scholarship in history pointed out that our knowledge about
the past was limited that it excluded voices of minorities of different ethnicity, gender,
social classes and other groups. For example, traditionally textbooks have presented the
Revolution to be a war for independence paying little attention to the social and political
relations that accompanied the military event. New scholarship in history began to make
Revolution more complicated and real by exploring what the Revolution meant to the
one-fifth of the colonial population that was black, to the thousands of Native Americans
caught up in the struggle, to women of different races and social position or to white
males of different classes, occupations, and regional backgrounds (Nash, Crabtree, &
Dunn, 1997). It is a more inclusive version of history, but much messier.

Lance argued that he is not against teaching about different groups of people’s
experiences, but he believes that “maybe I think that some of that would belong to
somewhere else; maybe we should have classes, we have our freshmen Global Studies,
we have uh, some geography, could be cultural geography and so on.” Lance argued that
“I don’t have time to do it.” “There are just so many other issues you’re skimming and a
number of them that I’m supposed to deal with, try to understand the politics of the day
and the issues of the day, everything else for the time period,” he said. Teachers choose
What they believe to be important to teach. Lance’s conception of multicultural history
implies that histories about people of color are not central to the politics and policies of
the day, and that the mainstream political history is the canon that he has to teach. Here
he emphasizes the dominance of the mainstream chronological narrative in defining

history and seeing other ways of conceptualizing history threatens that.

59

The way Lance addresses multicultural issues is then through discussing issues of
racism and civil rights within the mainstream narrative. Lance said that he has always
stressed Reconstruction more than the Civil War itself. The main reason is that
Reconstruction explains a lot of the racial problems that U.S. society has now. In his
lecture, Lance highlighted the violation of democratic principles during Reconstruction.
However, while he is conscious of violations of civil rights in his teaching, through
emphasizing telling a “straight history,” Lance inevitably puts the other groups of
peoples’ experiences at the margin. His lecturing method adds to his teaching of a

coherent national history. Below, I describe his teaching approaches.

Approaches to Teaching History

Lance teaches five classes, all sophomore U.S. History this year. According to
him, his methods for all classes are basically the same. There is an assigned textbook in
the class, but Lance said that he seldom uses it. Students will get the major contents and
concepts through his lectures; hence, students are required to take lecture-notes. Usually
once a week, there would be an issue-discussion day when Lance would bring in current
issues, e.g., stock market crash in Asia, drug abuse, and abortion, to discuss with
students. I will describe one typical lecture day of Lance’s teaching. By “typical,” I
mean his process of opening a lesson, review and teaching the contents for the day. This
lesson is chosen because it is within the unit of Reconstruction, a topic that Lance
identified as related to his conception of multicultural teaching. Then, there will be a
description of one issue-oriented discussion on a controversial topic—violence and

discrimination against homosexuality. Lance’s teaching on the Indian policy will be

60

described to highlight his approaches to teaching about diversity.

Begm' ing of the Lesson
1: 35PM. The bell had rung and the students had come into the room talking and
chatting with each other as usual. Lance was taking roll while students excitedly talked
to each other about their friends and things they did. He put the roll in a pocket by the
door (an administrative assistant would come to pick them up later) and then came back
to chat with students. It was 1:39PM. They were talking about playing golf and other
sports. Boys were particularly enthusiastic about this topic. Lance knows enough about
the sports to relate to those students. Lance held majors in both Physical Education and
History. He was a coach for nine years. Later he decided to be in the classroom with
students more and eventually quit coaching. Other times, Lance would chat with students
about TV programs or parties. By doing this, Lance was able to establish rapport with
students.
A couple of minutes later, Lance brought the subject back to business. He

reminded students about the quiz that they would have this week:

As we have been saying. I'd like to get to a point where we can have a little

quiz by Thursday. It might not work out. It might actually be Friday. We'll

see what we get covered. . .. But right now, let's get ready for the quiz over

Reconstruction. That's going to be Thursday or Friday.
Announcing quizzes before the day’s lesson starts and making sure that he has provided
suficient reminder so that students would prepare has become regular in his teaching.
“Quiz is tomorrow” or “quiz will cover...” is a routine announcement in the beginning of

the lesson. As students listened to the announcements, they did not bargain. They would

utter “ch!” as an expression for the unwelcome test. They would also ask for specifics of

61

the kind of quizzes and examinations that they were going to take.
Immediately following the quiz announcement, Lance started the day’s lesson on
the Reconstruction. He began by reviewing yesterday’s lesson.

Lance: Little review now. One of the things we've tried to point out to you is
the on-going examples of corruption that occurred because of the Civil War
over the Reconstruction Period that seemed to filter into our society and we
would label them as kind of corrupt behavior in one way or the other.
Sometimes even illegal or even unconstitutional or even undemocratic".
Give me an example. What would you put on your list if I asked you to cite
some of those corruptions as we call them that took place because of the war
or Reconstruction?

Stan5 : The F reedmen's Bureau.

Lance: The Freedmen's Bureau. We discovered, although well-intentioned,
that it had some corruption, some of the money got side-tracked,
carpetbaggers took advantage, didn’t always help the newly freed slaves, did
it? Yes, John.

This is Lance’s way to piece things together for students. It is a form of review, also a
way of him trying to get feedback fiom students to see if they have understood. Rather
than relying solely on the tests, Lance said that he would check students’ understanding
this way in class. In this review, Lance’s care for constitutional and democratic
principles is shown. He tries to connect events to those principles.

John: Martial law.

Lance: Martial law. Maybe the head of the list. To allow military rule or

occupation in the South in a democratic society. Very questionable. And

they took advantage of that. What else, Jenny?

Jenny: The impeachment of Johnson.

’ Throughout my discussions of teachers’ practices in this dissertation, I boldface words to highlight key
points in my discussions.
Students’ names in this dissertation are all pseudonyms.

 

62

Lance: The impeachment of Johnson definitely up there. For the wrong
reasons tried to get rid of a president. For political reasons, not really that he
had deserved that kind of attack. Mark?

Mark: The carpetbaggers.

Lance: The carpetbaggers themselves. Representing Northemers going to the
South to try to exploit, to take advantage and did so. David?

Four more students provided answers from their notes after Mark.

There was a designated textbook in the class, however, Lance did not use it very
often. Students were not required to read the textbook. They were however required to
take lecture notes. Taking lecture notes is important in Lance’s class. Lance does not
like to use textbooks for various reasons. First, he believes students do not like to read.
Second, he argues textbooks contain too many useless facts that they fail to provide big
the picture or general concepts. Third, he believes that he could do a better job making
the points to students, something he considers to be the most important thing in teaching
history. I asked both Lance and the students when preparing for the quizzes or essay
tests, do they need to read the textbook or look for other sources of information. They
said that the lecture notes are sufficient for preparing for the tests. The notes they took in
class are the primary source of information. The quizzes that students took every week or
sometimes every two weeks are mostly fill-in-the—blank and true-or-false questions that
seek to ensure students’ memorization of important facts. Then, at the end of a marking
Period and semester, they will have a test that contains essay questions.

Through eliciting student response to his pre-determined questions, Lance sought
to make sure that students got the major points he made yesterday as a springboard for

today’s lesson. The above excerpt is an example of Lance trying to do a “presentation

63

that involves students,” the most favored approach he has after thirty-five years of
teaching. Students provided information that Lance needed in order for him to piece
together the picture that he had in mind. Through the process of question-and-answer
review, Lance also came to know whether or not students were clear about what he has
tried to point out in his lectures.

Knowing the “picture” or the “idea” or the “whole point” is often referred to in
Lance’s teaching. For example, the review above had a central idea—corruption hinders
democracy—that links different issues during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Lance
wanted students to be able to see the major issues and points that he tried to raise through
reviewing, lecturing, as well as his directed discussion, which I will elaborate in the

following sections.

Lectures
After the review, Lance began the day’s lecture, presenting new information to
students. That new information has key points that he wants students to know.

Lance: Now, the next step people is to examine what's going to be done in the
future. Get into the 1880's and 1890's and even beyond the turn of the
century. A lot of this is kind of a carryover for many decades and eventually
it results in what we call a hands-off policy. Now, the hands-off policy is not
something that was written down, “see this is the policy of the government.”
The hands-off policy is once we look back, we see what happened, we kind of
say, well, that was a hands-off policy. See what I mean, it was kind of a hind
sight, we developed that phrase. Alright. They didn't call it that at the time.
Understand what I'm saying? What am I referring to? I'm referring to
the fact that there was segregation in the South. Blatant segregation
preventing voting, the Klan allowed to operate, violation of peoples' rights,
the 14th Amendment. Violation of voting rights. Literacy tests, all the same
and nothing was done about it. It's a hands-off policy. If Northem Presidents
were told about this for the next fifty years and beyond, what did they do
about it? Nothing. What did they intend to do about it? Nothing. If
Congress knew about it or were told, hey, do you know what goes on in

64

Southern states? Do you know it's all white juries? Do you know that Blacks
can be lynched from the nearest tree and nothing is ever done and no one is
ever charged with the crime or anything, it's just ignored? Well, that's
Alabama's problem. They should take care of that problem. They ignore it.
They say we're not getting into that. Hands off. The Supreme Court justices
were told or knew about, “hey you know, there's some blatant violation of
civil rights here.” They said, “no.” Nothing was done about it. And they
tried to take some of this to Congress for the most part it was just discarded.
They can't get enough votes to do anything. Believe me, people, that's going
to happen well into the 1950's and 60's. As late as that time period when
they tried to take legislation and say, we're going to change this. And
segregation laws, they did not.
This is an account of segregation during Reconstruction that Lance told students.
It was told in a passionate and succinct way. It is a rich passage that contains a lot of
information. In addition, there is a moral stance that Lance wanted to convey.
Segregation was allowed in the South and violations of civil rights were rampant. The
federal government did not intervene and it was wrong. His tone conveyed his
indignation toward the injustices done to blacks during Reconstruction. Then, he pointed
out the segregation problem seen in Reconstruction continued till the 1950’s and 1960’s.
Lance prided himself for being able to make things simple and keep it at the level of
students. He disagreed with a colleague who spent ten to twelve weeks teaching students
about the Civil War. He argued that what students need to know are the major points of
historical events and have a “big picture” of the past, not knowmg every detail of the war.
This belief about what is important for students to know and how to help students learn
has effect on his approaches to teaching history. Because there is a coherent narrative
structure or big picture that Lance wanted students to know, exploring more detailed and
complex relationships in an event threatens the clarity of the big picture.

Lecturing as the primary method in classroom instruction also seems to have

65

effect on Lance’s teaching. No students tried to probe more information for
understanding why the hands-off policy existed, or about the things he touched upon in
the story, e.g., literacy tests, KKK, lynching, and judicial system in the South. No one
questioned how blacks reacted to such kind of discriminatory practices. Students
listened. Some students took notes diligently. During his lecture, Lance would inquire,
“everybody clear on that?” to know if students got his points. “Understand what I'm
saying? What am I referring to? I'm referring to the fact that there was segregation in the
South,” Lance said to reinforce his big idea.

The version of Reconstruction that Lance taught judged that Reconstruction
failed; black suffrage was an error because blacks were taken advantage of by
carpetbaggers and scalawags. Andrew Johnson was a defender of constitutional
principles who was wrongly impeached. But, within the field of history, a new
interpretation of Reconstruction in the 1960’s began to dismantle the old interpretation.
The period of “black Reconstruction” after 1867 was portrayed as a time of extraordinary
progress in the South. Andrew Johnson was revealed as a racist politician too stubborn to
compromise with his critics. A major difference in the interpretation is that the new
interpretation recognized blacks themselves helped shape the change (F oner, 1988;
Foner, 1990). Lance’s “big picture” approach is challenged in this case when the
interpretation of a historical event changed. It requires that teachers recognize that
history is bound to change because in every generation, there are new questions to be
asked. The civil rights movement inspired people to ask questions about those non-elite
groups in the past; as a result, new scholarship revises and rewrites major events in U.S.

history like the Civil War and the Reconstruction. But, Lance’s subject matter

66

preparation and conception of history do not support him to recognize the new
interpretation. He continues to lecture on his version of Reconstruction and believes it to
be true.

Of the three teachers that I studied, Lance is the one who most consistently stuck
to his planned curriculum. A standard pace is one to two weeks per unit. Reconstruction
took Lance one week to teach. In a four-day period (Friday was a quiz day), he touched
upon major contents that he listed in his outline. He pointed out that the hands-off policy
and segregation were unjust and that that kind of practices continued into the 60’s.
Lance’s serious tone conveyed a sense of importance about this issue. It was knowledge
about the failure of America’s democratic practice that he wanted students to keep in
mind. From his perspective, telling the key points is the most effective way to help
students learn. Lance said that he has been sensitive to issues of race and equality and
stressed the “civil rights part of American history a lot more than anybody else [at
Dutchville High School] has.” However, Lance’s lecturing and master narrative
approach do not invite alternative and authentic voices to be heard.

Lance’s issue-oriented discussions, on the other hand, provide opportunity for
students to interact with him in ways other than giving back what Lance covered in his
lectures.

Issue-Oriented Discussions

Once or twice a week, Lance sets aside a time to engage students in discussing

current social issues like abortion rights and gun control. I portray what Lance described

as his most motivated class in this section to capture the kind of chances Lance provides

67

students in discussion6. Lance saw in a local news a report about gay bashing and he said
to students that “this is a serious issue, I want to treat it that way with a high level of
consideration.” He briefed the news about teenagers involved in killing gay people and
related the case to ethnic and religious minorities.
To me, it kind of reminds me of the things that have been to lots of minorities
throughout the years or throughout history, as they used to that to Jewish
people for example or different religious groups for various reasons. You
know just go after them because who they are if you just don’t like them. Or,
certainly racial groups, etc. That was done a lot.
And then, he added that “this one seems to have a little added hatred to it.” After
explaining to students the event, the way it reminded him of similar events against
minorities, and reasons for his puzzle, he asked students his question:
So, my question is: How come? What’s the mentality here that seems to be
apparent when people like those three young men seemed to have to go after

somebody like that that they have grown to hate. What’s the answer to that?
How come they seem to have to do that? Tracy?

Lance then involved the students in discussing gay bashing. He asked students questions
as a way to challenge their thoughts.

Tracy: I don’t know why, but they seem to be not right. (giggling sound in the
background)

Lance: Well, in other words, if people view it in their judgment is not right
and therefore, they have to go after somebody ‘cause they don’t do right
behaviors. Right?

Lance pointed out Tray’s logic and the conversation continued.

6 This is the 5"I hour class that I occasionally observed. The target class in this case is Lance’s 6'h hour
class which is described by him as an average class. For the 6th hour class, there is also a lot more student
engagement than their regular lecture days. But, since the purpose is to discuss opportunities Lance
provides to students, I will use the 5'h hour class, whose interaction is more intense and will highlight
Lance’s role in the class.

68

Tracy: Well, I said, that’s basically my assumption. They probably view it...
(inaudible)

Lance: O.K. That’s kind of a given. That’s true. But then, why can’t you just
leave that alone and said people’s choice are their own choice and just say it’s
different and I don’t even like it or maybe you even think that it’s not moral.
That’s your own judgment? But, the point still is, why you have to go beyond
that? What’s the answer here? Allivia?

Lance challenged Tracy’s assumption, provided his opinion toward gay bashing (respect

individual choice) and then waited for other answers.

Allivia: I think they are very uneducated. And, I think the people that are
doing it are not like up to these people, but more or like (inaudible) You
don’t just go and bash them... because they don’t ...(inaudible)
Lance: O.K., I’d like to adjust your words there a little bit. Let’s say it’s
based on some ignorance, which doesn’t mean you are not mentally, or have
mental capacity. But, there is a lot of ignorance involved. But, still, there are
people who do it who are not quote “ignoran .” They just do it or think they
have a need to do it. Right? What am I getting at here? Jessica?
Lance paraphrased Allivia’s point and confirmed her observation that there was
ignorance involved in gay bashing. Here we began to see more clearly that Lance had an
answer in mind that he wanted to pursue. Although Allivia’s point was a good one,
Lance did not stop to discuss it. He moved on to push for answers.
Jessica: I think that they are afraid that it’s gonna come into their community
and affect their lives than it is now.
Lance: So, they are protecting life as it is now, and they see it as a threat.

Jessica: Right.

Lance: Just like they used to see that with Jews, or Muslims, or any other
minority group. Or, Native Americans, right?

Jessica: Right.

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Lance: O.K., it’s a threat out there and the best way to solve it is to kind of
attack that threat. Very possible. Yes?

Lance took Jessica’s point and elaborated it. In a way, he affirmed Jessica’s idea. Then,
he elaborated it and related the behavior to discriminations against minorities implicitly
showing students how he made the connection. Students then were able to take on
Lance’s point:

Female student: It seems at the world, or yeah the world being tend to think a
lot of minority as we always have and just because people have a different
style of life, I guess, people seem to feel that they have the right to cure
them. . .. It’s just that we treat each other unjustly.

Lance: Well, again that kind of goes back to the minority [issue]. There’s
always been minority out there. And, somebody doesn’t like the very
treatment and some of it you referred to here, so it justified that you can attack
them or treat them in such fashion. You still haven’t quite hit. Uh, I’ll give
you a little hint. What about psychologically the behavior here?

Just when students had started to elaborate and think through some issues, Lance tried to

push on because he felt that he still has not got the answer he was looking for.

Male student: Well, that might be they think that if they don’t do it, I mean if
they do it, they have to feel that they you are getting into the group... You
know what I’m saying?

Lance: Not quite. But, you might be getting to the point that you kind of
touch on it a bit. Let’s. I just don’t want to give it away. I want you to try
to come to...(inaudible)

Allivia: It went back. . .if you don’t go alone with somebody else from like
standup and say this isn’t right, then they are gonna say that you’re gay.

Lance: Ha! So, in other words, at some point, you have to find a way to prove
that you’re not.

Allivia: Right.

Lance: And, what is the best way to show your masculinity, right, is to do
that. How do you prove? Well, I’ll show you how I prove. I will attack those

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people, right? Now, that proves it, doesn’t it? I not only hate them, I kill
them. Right?
Male student: All right. (more students talk)

By giving students cues, Lance found the answers he wanted. Students might learn from
this process to think hard about what might be the psychological state of people who try
to kill homosexual persons. After some more discussion, Lance concluded:
I mean it’s a lot of rights that are concerned. There are lot of things that you
don’t like, or you don’t agree with, but it doesn’t give you the right to go after
that group. The judgment is your own, but the behavior is a different thing,
isn’t it? Do you understand what we are getting at here? Masculinity and
having to prove it and insecurity? And, so therefore you have to show it to
everybody. You understand that? Alice, you understand that?
Alice: Yeah.

Lance: Yeah. (to make sure) Steve? Nick?

Lance wanted to make sure that all students got the point he tried to make. Toward the
end of the discussion, Lance tried to make his points more clearly and said,
“homosexuality is a personal choice and it’s a free country.” Students had questions
about the validity of the homosexual practices. It was clear that the issue of sexual
orientation bothered some of the students. Lance tried to helped students understand that
he was not saying that homosexuality is a good thing, but saying that “society in a free
country have to kind of respect the rights of people who make choices,” and try to
understand why some people really have strong opinions to show that they are against it.
Lance: What guys always prove that I’m secure? How do I do that? By
aggressive means. That’s a hard level of things here people. I hope that
you’re ready to deal with that. You’re almost juniors. You should be. It’s a
tough issue. Some because it deals with religion, the morals, and

interpretation, but there is still a bottom line. People who are quite different
and can you let them be different. And, I don’t see much difference in the

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whole civil rights movement and that. Whether they were Jewish or they were
Muslims, whether they were black, white, Catholic, Protestant, whatever,
Mormon, right? They used to do that to the Mormons. Say, there is a
Mormon, go get them. Boy, this is a religious group, leave them alone. Yeah,
they don’t worship the right way. I know. The homosexual thing is probably
the most extreme of that ‘cause it represents something totally against what
society accepts. But, O.K., now think about it.
In the final note, Lance made a conclusion about how the issue is really about human
choice, civil rights, and attitude (“can you let them be different?”) toward differences.
The process of discussion engaged students’ active participation and thinking. Because
of the choice of a controversial topic and the use of a discussion format, students had the
opportunity to engage in thinking about issues in alternative ways. It is also obvious that
Lance’s belief that he needs to give students his points persisted. But, the discussion
format and Lance’s democratic lenses opened a window for challenging thoughts.

This discussion also reveals that because Lance did not provide texts or materials
for discussions to base upon, a lot of the context and knowledge had to come from Lance.
And, that is Lance’s purpose—challenging students’ prior knowledge through having
them interact with him. Teaching students to contrast perspectives based on different
materials is not Lance’s approach. When dealing with the issue of gay rights, Lance
approached it from the perspective of individual freedom, a liberal democratic view. His
approach to teaching multicultural history in general is conceptual, but not experiential.
That is, he does not try to understand thoughts, feelings and experiences of homosexual
persons’ lives, their experiences of being discriminated against and their struggles. He
does not tell stories from the insiders’ perspectives, but from the perspective of

democratic principles of equality and freedom. This orientation is also manifested in his

teaching of the Indian policy and Trail of Tears when he asked students to summarize

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what the textbook says about the event. His purpose was to see if students can see “what

the key ideas are.”

Teaching about the Indian Policy
Lance had students do a “book assignment” on the Indian removal policy during

Andrew Jackson’s presidency. He said that because the textbook has given a pretty good
account, he let students read the section on Indian policy from the textbook in class and
had them write a summary. Lance said that he told students that they have to finish the
summary in class and that controls students who would waste time and do nothing. He
wanted students to write a summary of “what they think happened or what the key ideas
are” about the Indian removal policy.

I don’t have them do questions in the end or anything like that. I just have

them summarize in their own words what they think are the key points. It’s

like give them a couple of hints. Then, once they do that, then I’ll cover it in

class and I’ll ask them some questions--if they know some of the key points or

they just know words. Then, I’ll put a grade on it.
The philosophy behind this “book assignment” method is consistent with his commitment
to ensure that students get the points that he considers to be important. Lance stressed
that students understand the big ideas, often viewed from the policy perspective or his
ideas of the democratic principles. He would make sure that students understand the key
points by covering them after students wrote their summaries. Lance believed that
students would get the central ideas that they need to know in his lectures. Lance’s
approach did not aim to provide a contextual understanding of Native Americans’

perspectives and experiences. Examples of teaching a more contextual understanding

about the policy are: analyzing the impact of the removal and resettlement on Native

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Americans such as the Cherokee and the Choctaw, and explaining and evaluating the
various strategies of Native Americans such as accommodation, revitalization, and
resistance (National Standards for United States History, 1994). As explained, getting
into the details and complex experiences of those other stories is not Lance’s focus.
Persistent in Lance’s teaching is his desire to give students what he knows
through lectures and discussions. Multicultural scholars and history educators believe
that students need to engage in weighing evidence, analyzing and interpreting history
(Banks, 1994c; Kobrin, 1992; Nash et al., 1997). However, Lance’s beliefs about

teaching and learning endorse his lecture method and teacher-directed discussions.

Beliefs about Teaching and Learning
Lance’s conception of history influence his approach to teaching a multicultural
history through mentioning concepts of civil rights and democratic beliefs in a master
narrative. His beliefs about teaching and learning reinforce his master narrative
approach. Historical inquiry and examining embedded point of views in history are not
Lance’s major focus. His assumptions about students and belief about what a good
teacher is justify his approach to giving students the important knowledge and correct

viewpoints when discussing current social issues.

Assumptioni about Students
To Lance, teenagers are more interested in socializing with their friends than
studying academic subjects. Teenagers act to respond to emotional things rather than try

to sit back and analyze things. In addition, not all teenagers are suitable for the academic

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track. The U.S. educational system tries to say that everyone is for college. This
contradicts Lance’s practical experiences. He believes that there should be vocational
training for some students. “Everybody isn’t the same; everybody doesn’t have the same
I.Q. or the same motivation or the same background,” said Lance. He said that he has
five students who are what he called the “resisters” who totally give up learning. “It’s a
hard fight,” he said. Asked if his pedagogy differs when teaching different classes
(Lance has a couple of classes that have more “resource students7”), Lance said that his
pedagogy is the same, but I would see him encourage students more and ask if they
understood more in classes with more resource kids. Lance has struggles about reaching
all students. He admitted that his lecturing and whole-group discussion methods do not
appeal to all students and that not all students learn effectively through his approaches.
But, he is convinced that those are still effective methods. “Those who are the resisters
say they can’t respond to it. If they ever try, they somehow miraculously do O.K. . .; once
they really make an effort, they can find out that they can,” said Lance.

Lance finds that “students find ways not to do much.” He also believes that many
educational theories or ideas promoted by child-centered philosophers are “idealistic” but
not “realistic.” I asked him to comment on a statement in a Dutchville school newsletter
that suggests to teachers to “promote fieedom by giving students ever greater choices:
reading assignments and seating.” He said,

If I gave all those choices in reading assignments, or it was their own choice,
you know what they’re gonna pick? The smallest amount. If I gave them five
books for them to read and one of them was Animal Farm, 125 pages, they
will all pick Animal Farm, or at least 90 percent will. . .. So, it just kind of

sounds good and seating and classroom rules. It almost sounds to me they are
like it’s an open school, you know like Summerhill or something. And, it all

 

 

 

7 Students who are identified as needed more remedial instruction. They go to resource rooms where a
resource teacher will spend time with them in a more one-on-one basis.

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sounds good and it does some good things, but you know what, it doesn’t last
because humans kind of want some structure and organization, assignments,
etc. If given the choices, I don’t think they would do very well. And, they
take the easy way out, more times than not.
Most educators would agree that we need to give students structures and organization to
facilitate their learning. Lance helps students learn through telling them major contents
and concepts that they need to know as well as guiding them in discussions to make a
point. His assumption that students are not self-motivated learners and that learners will
not learn well when given freedom in learning prevents him from exploring alternative
pedagogies. It enhances his belief that he should have tight control over what students
will learn to make sure that they get the most important knowledge in the subject matter,
especially with freshmen and sophomores.

In the past Lance usually taught a couple of junior and senior classes. He also
taught accelerated history class where students are more challenging. Lance will allow
more self-directed projects in those classes and have students report their research.
However, Lance thought that “when they do deal with their topics and present and so on,
they don’t do very well.”

I tell them when you do the presentation here. . ., I would like you to get some
analysis. And, you know what, they hardly ever get to that stage. They’ll do
a report or give a talk on Eisenhower, they’ll tell what the issues were, what
he stood for, what this reading says about him, or whatever. It’s very hard.
Without me, they don’t get to the analysis stage.
With this experience and assumption in mind, Lance’s response to reformers’ call for
school-age students to “do history” is that it is beyond high school level. He said, “it’s

about way way way removed from high school, what goes on in high schools.” Reading

Steams’ (1991) and Kobrin’s (1992) ideas about teaching history in schools in the

76

multicultural viewpoints that I had teachers comment on (see Appendix E for viewpoint
#4), Lance expressed that “this to me sounds like what’s going on in colleges and
beyond.” Lance said that one of the things he does well is that he keeps things at
students’ level.
Lance: There are teachers who try to teach beyond high school students’ level.
Now, there are lot of books and materials that are for college level; they are
not for high school level. And, then they have no place in high school ‘cause
the kids are not gonna they can’t handle them.
Interviewer: Because of their literacy level?
Lance: Well, literacy and interest level. (Take up a book from his desk) Here
is a good example on Taking Sides8 which is both sides of issues and clashing
issues in American history and so on. Again, there is one on the
Reconstruction period. If you read both of these, you know, high school kids,
this is not for them. It’s for college.
Interviewer: Not because of the language.
Lance: No. Just a little too hard for them, a little too deep, a little too
detailed. Kids are not going to get into the theory of whether this
interpretation of Reconstruction is right or this one is or anything else. That’s
just too much for them. They are high school kids. You have to understand
that.

Interviewer: And, it would be easier for them to take one account and believe.

Lance: (Pause) Yeah, I think it would be.

It is not a surprise that Lance believes that having students compare conflicting accounts,
analyze them, and come up with their own ideas would be impossible for high school
students. Teaching students to “do history” requires a lot of knowledge and skills from
the teachers. Teachers have to know more than one account in history; they also need to
know how to engage students to think historically using pedagogy suitable to their level.

This is difficult to do for high school teachers when the school expects teachers to cover

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certain historical knowledge. It is also difficult for teachers to teach differently when
teachers have not seen what “doing” history looks like at the high school level. Given
Lance’s master narrative conception of history teaching, it would be even harder for him
to see the importance of involving students in historical inquiry and examining
underlying perspectives in historical accounts.
The kind of pedagogy that multiculturalists call for is one that emphasizes
developing citizens’ higher-order thinking skills and historical empathy. Banks said,
When diverse and conflicting perspectives are juxtaposed, students are
required to compare, contrast, weigh evidence, and make reflective decisions.
They are also able to develop an empathy and an understanding of each
group’s perspective and point of view. The creation of their own versions of
events and situations, and new concepts and terms, also requires students to
reason at high levels and to think critically about data and information.
(Banks, 1997, p.16)
Such kind of standards is consistent with the National Standards for United States History
(1994) and calls by history educators who advocate teaching history by “doing history”
(Holt, 1990; Kobrin, 1996). Multiple perspectives are stressed and students become
active participants in a community of learning where the teacher scaffolds student
learning by providing appropriate primary and/or secondary materials and designing tasks
that facilitate learning (Levstik & Barton, 1997).
Lance’s attitude toward historical inquiry or teaching about the interpretive nature
of history is that it is not for high school students. It’s been years since he had students
read the Gettysburg Address. “I think that it’s more effective and [students] will

understand a little more if they just hear the main points or main interpretations that I try

to give,” said Lance. Primary documents can be instrumental in helping students

8 Greenhaven Publisher.

78

understand the nature of historical inquiry and how one event can be interpreted
differently by difi'erent readers. But, teaching students how to do history is not Lance’s
goal. He is more interested in getting students to know what he considers to be the basics
of U.S. history.

Below is an excerpt taken out of his lecture at the end of the Civil War and the
significance of Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg:

Lincoln had given a speech, a year and a half earlier now, at Gettysburg. The
battle was done there. He went to the battlefield to a kind of memorial service
to honor the dead in that battle and he gave a famous speech. In that speech
there are some very key points that lead us to try to understand Lincoln and
the issues of the times. There are lots of ways to do this. You know, I
could give you all copies of the speech and have you take it home and
read it and interpret it for me to see if you really understood it. See if you
really could turn MTV off and actually read something. But I know what
you'd do. You'd throw it away or you'd lose it or you'd come in or you'd
be reading two seconds before the class just to get it done. Did I hear
today that it must be a book report due or something in some of your English
classes because everybody's got 400 pages to read tonight. The book is 410
pages and get it all done tonight. You just never learn, do you. But, I also
could just interpret. I'm supposed to know what it says. Give you the
key points and you know, I think it's a better way to get you to
understand it. And basically, the Gettysburg address is this. Lincoln's
points were 1) When he gave the address to the dead or the memorial to those
who had fallen at Gettysburg, he said it's for all...

Gettysburg Address is just 272 words long. Because of his assumption about students’
attitudes toward reading, Lance chose to tell students major points that he considers
important in the address. Students then are implicitly told that history is fixed even
though in his lecture, he mentioned the term “interpretation.” The nature of historical
interpretation is not what Lance intended for students to learn. The “basic knowledge” of
history is. His lectures become the account that replaces the textbook as the dominant

source of knowledge.

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Although the nature of historical inquiry is not Lance’s focus, teaching students
about different points of view is a clearly articulated goal that Lance has in mind.
Frequently, Lance talks about the importance of students “sitting back and analyzing
issues” and having students look at different sides to many issues and “that none of us are
all right or wrong.” “And, I try to challenge them in some ways to think about things like
that,” said Lance. Taking different points of view does not appear in Lance’s daily
lectures; it appears mostly in his issue-oriented discussions when Lance discusses current
issues that are controversial, e.g., gay bashing, or two-sided issues like unionism. Asked
if I have had the chance to observe in his class that “students sit back and analyze,” Lance
replied, “I don’t know if you did as much as you might when we’re covering other
things.” “When we get into the history of unions, that really becomes a two sided issue,”
said Lance. Usually when Lance is presenting what he calls two-sided issues, he would
tell students both the pros and cons. Although there are opportunities for students to
express their opinions and Lance welcomes students to “pick him on,” there is usually a
right answer given at the end of the discussion—the point that he tries to make. The
assumption he has is that students come fi'om conservative backgrounds and would react
to things emotionally, hence, he would like to show students another point of view (his)

that is different from theirs.

Belief about the Teacher’s Role
Lance’s belief about being a teacher corresponds with his belief about students
and commitment to transmit foundational knowledge. To Lance, a good teacher is

someone who taught similarly to what he does. “I remember a person who taught similar

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to the way I do with a lot of lecture and presentation format and then hopefully at some
point getting some analysis of what the issues are.” Many teachers teach the facts
without giving students concepts. Reading the text and filling out worksheets is not what
Lance considers to be good teaching. In his view, good teaching “really comes down to
are people really competent in what they are doing.” And, “I guess the key is that you
kind of use your presentations to do other things that you bring in other topics and other
issues and try to make some connections.” Lance believes that his teaching is more than
just dry lectures. Lance’s lectures are conceptual. They have points and big ideas. He
would make sure that he “hit all the key points” because he believes that without him,
students are not going to get the important concepts as manifested in his teaching on
Reconstruction and discussions of gay bashing. Sitting in Lance’s class, one gets a clear
idea of Lance’s logic and main ideas.

Underlying Lance’s beliefs about teaching and learning is his goal to teach
everyone equally. Lecturing is the most equitable method because it makes sure that all
students, including resource kids, get the same kind of instruction and the same contents.
Group work and cooperative learning, in Lance’s view are not very effective:

Kids won’t do what they need to do. That’s just like group work. You have a
group of six kids over here. I’m here to tell you that two of them are gonna do
most of the work in most cases. And, I’m not so sure that’s the best way to
deal with things all the time.
In Lance’s judgement, collectively student learning does not turn out well using a group
work format. He argued that not all children benefit from group work or cooperative

learning. “That’s why I think it’s much better for me as a teacher to make more of the

presentations and deal more with the issues that need to be dealt with and raise the

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16:

questions and try to get them involved in it than it is to turn it over to the students,” said
Lance. The strong sense of obligation that as a teacher he has to make sure that everyone
gets the important knowledge characterizes Lance as a teacher. Instructional alternatives
are not considered to be effective to him because he cannot be sure that all students will
learn the knowledge he wants to impart.

Lance’s beliefs about teaching and learning reinforce his lecturing approach to
teaching history. The beliefs are based on a conception of knowledge that is ready to be
transmitted as well as a goal that history teaching is to give all students the basics or an
overview of history. Multicultural history teaching, hence, if taught by Lance, has to be

within a master narrative.

Purpose of History Teaching
There is consistency among Lance’s conception of history, beliefs about teaching

and learning and his purpose for history teaching. I have discussed that Lance’s purpose
of history teaching is to teach students about the “uniqueness” of American democracy,
its constitutional principles, and how leaders and their policies affect political events.
There is a story line that characterizes major political and military events in this country.
Lance’s goal for high school history teaching is a cultural transmission one (Barr, Barth,
& Sherrnis, 1977). His aim is to provide students the “cultural literacy” (Hirsch, 1988)
which is fundamental to all citizens. High school teaching and learning in every subject
is to give students a kind of foundational knowledge. He said,

We’re trying to give them a kind of liberal arts education, our system tries to,

we said before we graduate everybody at age 18 and give them a smattering

overview of Science and English and hopefully they can make decisions and
understand things. They are not gonna go into great detailed analysis of

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theories and history and the kind of things that you get at the college level.

The “smattering overview” of U.S. history is what Lance called the “hard” history
or the traditional narrative of U.S. history that he has been teaching. It covers a range of
political events and leaders, social issues, and concepts of democracy and anti-racism.

By covering the basics, Lance fulfills his goal to give a “smattering overview” of history
to students. It incorporates ideas of democracy, respect and tolerance for differences.
Lance may not teach history in ways that explore alternative perspectives and
complexities of the American experience for different groups of people. Through his
lectures and directed discussions, he has tried to infuse in students democratic concepts

that respect individual freedom and civil rights.

Discussion

Lance’s approach to multicultural history is not a “contributions approach” that
merely inserts ethnic heroes to the curriculum (Banks, 1994b). His teaching is
conceptual, emphasizing big ideas that are important. Yet, his perspective remains that of
the mainstream Eurocentric account. That is, he does not provide alternative perspectives
to look at historical events such as Reconstruction and Trail of Tears. Lance said that he
is not into teaching different ethnic groups’ perspectives and experiences. He is more
interested in teaching the U.S. democratic and constitutional principles of freedom and
equal civil rights. However, knowing that a teacher has an interest in promoting ideas of
equality and democracy does not tell us how he will go about teaching them. It also does
not tell us how he will look at the multicultural past of the nation. Singer said quite

poignantly that “no curriculum is inherently interesting” even when one is teaching what

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seems to be richly diverse multicultural history (Singer, 1992, p.85).

There are several points that Lance helps us illuminate. First, it seems that a
teacher’s subject matter preparation does have a profound impact on the teacher’s
historical knowledge. Lance’s backgrounds in military and political history (the
“standard American history”) and his conception of history as a Eurocentric master
narrative shape a lot of what he believes to be important to teach. He himself received a
master narrative history education, and it would be hard to him to imagine what it means
to teach history from perspectives of the ethnic minorities, and how history may look
very differently fiom non-Eurocentric perspectives. One wonders if his teaching would
be different had he had taken social histories or ethnic studies in college. Without the
subject matter knowledge in ethnic histories, Lance has little knowledge to rely on. In
addition, his conception that history stays the way it is with the political elite at the center
of the narrative prevents him from accessing some critical new scholarship and adjusting
his teaching.

The incoherence of multicultural history is also another reason why Lance could
not teach multicultural history other than using an additive approach. Because Lance
aims to teach a coherent narrative to students as foundational historical knowledge, he
could not teach an inclusive master narrative because historians have not yet been able to
tell such a story (Bender, 1986; Higham, 1994). This narrative problem is discussed
further in chapter six.

Second, Lance’s democratic ideas are important concepts in multicultural
education. The concepts allow him to focus on ideas of civil rights and respect for

differences and help learners see patterns across history. Those are important ideas.

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However, in classroom practice, multiculturalists favor a more democratic discourse that
allows students more freedom to explore their questions and support their findings that
Lance tends to believe to be ineffective. A more student-centered instruction has
historically been difficult for teachers to develop (Cuban, 1993). It appears that a shared
democratic belief does not guarantee a common vision for multicultural practice. This
begs a research question about teachers’ beliefs about democracy and the relationship of
such beliefs to their practices. Do they make a difference in teaching history in a
multicultural way?

Third, beliefs about teaching and leaming have a bearing on how multicultural
history is defined and implemented. Lance’s assumptions about students’ inability to
tackle more than one account and his perception of himself as a teacher who is
responsible for delivering important knowledge to all his students prevents him from
getting students to learn about alternative interpretations. An implication is that if we
would like teachers to teach history that goes beyond telling a story, then, we have to deal
with teachers’ beliefs about teaching and leaming. The reason why teachers don’t teach
the interpretive nature of history is not that they do not know that history is interpretive,
but reflects what they believe students should know (McDiarmid & Vinten-Johansen,
1993)

Lance’s beliefs about teaching and learning precludes learning that is
constructivist and inquiry-based, which requires that learners take more active roles in
their own learning, and teachers take more responsibility to provide necessary intellectual
structures to scaffold student learning (Levstik & Barton, 1997). Such structures are

designed based on the teachers’ understanding of the students’ prior knowledge, the

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sut

itt

subject matter, and the process of inquiry. This requires a particular kind of teacher
preparation that aims to facilitate more active learning. It appears that if teachers were to
teach history and multicultural history more thoroughly, they need to rethink the nature of
teaching and learning.

Fourth, Lance’s goal of transmitting cultural knowledge or foundational
mainstream knowledge to students seems to be in conflict with teaching multicultural
history authentically. There is tension between preserving a coherent mainstream
narrative and teaching about other groups of people authentically from their
perspectives—viewing them at the center of their experiences. Lance provides his
students with important mainstream knowledge and concepts. His adding concepts like
racism and discrimination, or civil rights, freedom and equality, becomes the way he

responds to the call for multiculturalism in history.

Conclusion

There are many things that shape a teacher’s orientation toward multicultural
history teaching. Lance’s commitment to a core curriculum that is based on European
American political history has a major impact on his approaches to addressing
multicultural history in his U.S. history curriculum. It is manifested in his belief in a
“hard” or “straight” history that is primarily about Presidential administrations and major
political and military events in the past. Within the mainstream narrative of U.S. history,
Lance promotes ideas of civil rights and individual freedom through addressing issues of
racism and discrimination against people who are different. Lance’s lecturing method to

cover his content also reinforces the way multiculturalism is defined in his curriculum.

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U.S. history is a master narrative ready to be told, and because there is not yet an
inclusive master narrative available from historians, Lance’s multicultural history is
inevitably additive. This means that ethnic minorities’ experiences are not at the center
of history. Ideas of equality and freedom are emphasized, but minorities’ lives, thoughts,
and experiences are not explored, which means that students have limited opportunities to

develop rich and complex understandings about the multicultural past of the U.S.

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31

Si

CHAPTER IV

WHITNEY: SUBJECT MATTER KNOWLEDGE, PEDAGOGY AND
MULTICULTURAL HISTORY TEACHING

Whitney believes that her curriculum reflects her goal to teach U.S. History from
a multicultural perspective. From her report, she embraces the idea of multiculturalism.
She would like her high school students to leave high school with the idea that
“everybody isn’t coming from the same point of view as they are” and that “our history is
bigger than ourselves’ and our grandparents’.” Whitney teaches in the suburban high
school from which she graduated. According to her, she realized how culturally
impoverished her Anglo-Protestant community is when she got to the university; she
wants her students to leave high school with an understanding that the world is much
larger than their narrow perspective. To her, “[history] shouldn’t be white people’s
history; it should be American history.” She said, “it’s only right and just that we all
learn about other people’s history. . .; we have this rich history in this country and we all
need to know that.” Whitney showed her desire to teach a version of U.S. History that is
more inclusive.

Whitney also thinks that she teaches history in a non-traditional way. Not only
does she employ methods other than lecturing, she teaches contents about the average
people’s lives which tend to be ignored in traditional textbooks. She has her class “do
research,” do art work, watch videos, etc., to enhance students’ interests in history. She
also provides supplementary materials, such as readings with first-hand accounts of
women’s lives on their way West, to add to the textbook. Textbooks, according to

Whitney, tend to be biased against women and ethnic minorities; they are mostly about

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h:

political and military history and about those in power. Whitney said that one principle
she has about selecting materials is that she would like to teach experiences of the
ordinary people. She believes that her approaches—both the contents and the methods—
to history are the right thing to do].

In many ways, Whitney’s teaching is unusual. Even the students I casually talked
to expressed the same notion that she does things differently than most history teachers
they have had. Most teachers they had would just lecture and have them do dittos and
answer end-of-chapter questionsz. Whitney has students do different projects without her
standing in front of the classroom most of the time. To some observers, Whitney may
appear to be teaching history differently. In fact, the new social studies teacher and
university interns in the building considered her to be someone with good ideas who
teaches history well3. However, while Whitney was able to articulate ideas about
multiculturalism in a way that is consistent with multiculturalists’ point about having an
inclusive history, she has difficulty living up to the kind of multicultural history teacher
she would like to be. What is difficult for history teachers who try to teach history from
multicultural perspectives? What challenges do they have?

In this chapter, I will first describe Whitney’s conception of history, which then
leads to a discussion about her practices, which emphasize feeling over analysis and

information instead of interpretation. In describing and discussing her practices, I will

 

' In talking about her assistance to a new social studies teacher in the school, she said, “I have had an
agenda. I think that the things I’m teaching and the way I am teaching them are the ways history should be
taught. So, in helping him, I’m influencing his teaching and he’s using some of my materials and my ideas”
(Interview, October 7, 1997)

2 This kind of comment is congruent with social studies literature that most teachers lecture and most
teaching is full of rote memorization (Goodlad, 1984).

3 She is also viewed by a university professor as someone who is committed to social justice.

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touch upon Whitney’s subject matter knowledge and how it affects her teaching. Then, I
will discuss her beliefs about teaching and learning. I conclude the chapter with some

discussions of the issues that Whitney raised for us.

Conception of History

Whitney struck me as someone who is sophisticated about what history is. As a
young teacher (it was her fifth year teaching when she participated in this study), Whitney
had exposure to multicultural issues in college. Unlike teachers of previous generations
whose college history curriculum consisted of traditional white male political and military
history, Whitney’s generation began to have more social history, including women’s
history and histories of minorities, in their curriculum. They also began to have courses
that address issues of inequalities and injustices in different disciplines. That exposure
had an impact on her. Although Whitney only had one women’s history course, she was
left with an idea that history is not only about Presidents and generals, but also the
ordinary people, including women like her. “I learned that their lives weren’t so ordinary
and I’ve come to see that mine isn’t so ordinary either.” The women’s history experience
was like an awakening to her. She recalled the impact, “Wow, I never did anything that
made me famous, but my life has historical significance too just like all these women that
I am reading about. It was definitely an awakening.”

More than six decades ago, Carl Becker (1932) wrote an article whose title speaks
out a characteristic of history that school history has not yet been able to live up to:
Everyman his own historian. History is like a person’s memory or construction of the

past that gives ways of understanding and sense-making for one’s future directions. The

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field of social history springs from this concept that ordinary pe0ple, even the most
ignored and silenced, have histories that are important and significant (Kessler-Harris,
1990; Veysey, 1979). Social history encompasses different kinds of histories that have
been omitted, including ethnic and women’s history, labor history, among others.
Because the stories are told from alternative perspectives, social history often provides
different explanations or interpretations of the past that challenge traditional textbook
accounts. Whitney’s articulated views about history reflect her exposure to social history
that took root in college campuses in the 1980s (D'Souza, 1991; Hu-DeHart, 1993).

Whitney talks about history being more than one perspective; she also talks about
racism and injustices in society, an important point that many multiculturalists stress
(Banks & Banks, 1989; Sleeter & McLaren, 1995a). She took a Sociology course in
college in which race and race relations were dealt with. When talking about Affirrnative
Action, she said, “because preferences exist based on who has historically held power that
give advantage to some people, we have to balance that out somehow.” She went on to
argue that until women and minorities get in the club, preferences are always going to go
to those who historically hold power.

Her comment on history teaching (see Appendix E for four different viewpoints
on multicultural history teaching) demonstrated her understanding about the underlying
assumptions about traditional history as being told from those in power. In some ways,
her views about multiculturalism is consistent with multiculturalists who challenge the
dominant values and views of the society and the past. The past should not be
homogenized by one group of people. When she commented on the first viewpoint in

which the traditional view of history is stressed, she said,

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Well, if George Washington and John Adams are deciding that this should
happen, then, it’s pretty much gonna be their values that are dominant, I guess.
“Immigrants will get assimilated in our customs.” Whose custom? George’s
and John’s? Um. That’s see. “What these immigrants have in common is the
Western tradition which is the source of the ideas of individual freedom and
political democracy.” So, O.K., well, if individual freedom is part of it, then
the freedom to have their own history is part of it also. . ..

The quote spells out Whitney’s multicultural conception of history. Individuals are
entitled to understand the past that made sense to them. Her tone reflects her value that
history should not be dominated by those in power.

When talking about the movie Glory, Whitney said that it is history told from a
particular perspective. She used Glory when she teaches the Civil War believing that,
though romanticized, it’s an important perspective for students to know that blacks
played roles in the war. In her conversations during interviews, Whitney demonstrated
that she is a teacher who is aware of the nature of history being about perspectives and
decisions about what stories to tell. She said that she cannot give students an accurate
picture of U.S. History because she does not know about all groups of people’s

perspectives:

Oh, there are at any one time, not only are there different ethnic groups, but
there are different socio-economic groups. . .. For World War II, I don’t have a
hundred letters from a hundred different points of view—fiom rich people and
poor people and black people and white people. I don’t have all those things.
And, even if I did have them, I don’t know if I would have time to have
students read them all and process all of that. So, since I don’t have the time
to expose them to every body’s point of view, they’re never gonna have a
complete picture. But, if they if I can give them a variety of points of view for
each era, hopefully, they are gonna realize this is part of it. Ifwe study World
War II, fiom the White perspective and African American perspective and we
study the 1960’s from the perspective of the young and the perspective of the
old, and then we study the Civil War a variety pretty soon they’re gonna see,
“Oh, there’s a pattern here.” Every time, something happens in U.S.
history, there are different groups of people who have a different

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experience of that event. And, then hopefully, they’ll realize well, and we
can even talk about. You know, we didn’t really you know what were black
people doing then? You know they are probably gonna start asking those
kinds of questions. So, they’ll hopefully it’ll apply to other things.
Whitney’s conception of history is sophisticated in the sense that she recognizes who
wrote history, whose voices were ignored historically, and how there are different
perspectives and experiences involved in every historical events. Such a conception of

history has effect on her choice of her curriculum. She has the inclination to include

other materials that represent different people’s experiences.

AddingMulticultural Material_s_

Using the textbook as a guide, Whitney selectively adds topics related to ordinary
people, such as “Life in the Cities,” “Culture of the 1920’s,” and “Experiences of Native
American Indians 1945-1960” (see Appendix G). Whitney covers a lot less political
history than Lance. Part of the reason is that Whitney is not interested in political history
herself. Another reason is that she would like to include some other people in her
curriculum. Her multicultural conception of history affects her . Asked what the
difference is between her curriculum and the County’s curriculum, Whitney said,

I think this County curriculum is more traditional and it has more to do with

politics. And, oh, politics and military strategies and things like that and my

approach is more personal and also more about ordinary people and not just
people who are making the high power decisions and things like that.
By “being personal and more about ordinary people,” Whitney meant how in her
curriculum she includes more ordinary people’s experiences and how she selects

materials like women’s diaries on their way west, immigrant experiences, and black

experiences in World War II.

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Her inclination toward teaching common people’s experiences and feelings came
across when I asked her to select seven topics out of ten prescribed topics of U.S. history
(see Appendix J). “I’ll absolutely do Women in the American Experience. And, I’ll do
Immigration,” Whitney picked her first two topics. She explained that she will teach
Women in American Experience because people do not know “how women have quietly
gone about influencing how our country is taking shape.” She will teach Immigration
because the country is the land of immigrants. This notion excludes Africans who were
involuntarily immigrated, Mexicans who became immigrants because their land was
annexed, and Indians who were here before anyone else. However, her inclination to
include the previously ignored people is obvious. She discarded topics of American
Revolution, Reconstruction, and History of American Presidency, keeping Women in the
American Experience, Immigration, Civil War, Frontier, Great Depression, Native
American history to the present, and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War 11. When
deciding whether she should keep the American Revolution or the Great Depression,
Whitney opted for the Great Depression because she has more resources that she can
“show ordinary people’s trials and tribulations.” The decision was made because she has
the resources and that the resources can show ordinary people’s feelings and experiences.

Asked how she went about choosing her materials, she said that she would look
for perspectives that represent “another group of Americans.” Therefore, when teaching
the Industrialization, she said that she would include “immigrants’ perspective” and
“women’s perspective.” A question is raised by Whitney’s use of the word “perspective.”

Whitney uses the word “perspectives” to connote “feelings” and “information,” but this

conceptualization does not necessarily lead to epistemological challenges to historical

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accounts. In the following sections, I will describe some of Whitney’s approaches to
teaching history that shed light on her multicultural history teaching, namely, teaching

feelings, distinguishing information and interpretation, and doing research.

Approaches to Teaching History
Whitney is a teacher who emphasizes instructional strategies. My introduction of
her approaches to teaching history is based on instructional strategies that have
implications for multicultural history teaching. Various instructional strategies that

Whitney employed will be incorporated in the discussion.

Teaching Feelings

Whitney believes that she is teaching multicultural history because she does not
just teach the history of those in power; she also focuses a lot on the ordinary people’s
feelings and experiences. The word “feeling” was constantly mentioned in her
conversations with me during the interviews. “Feeling” for her means getting inside
people’s experiences and feeling for them. It is about historical empathy. Although
“historical empathy” is not the term Whitney used, she consistently addressed her goal as
having students feel for immigrants, women, and ordinary people’s experiences.
“Feeling” also means knowledge about someone’s experiences. It is about perspective.
“IfI can understand or I think I understand how people felt or experienced something,
that’s knowledge to me,” said Whitney. She went on to elaborate that “certainly my
feeling comes from the people whose books I’ve read or whose diaries I’ve read. . .. If I

had only studied the journals of the generals who conquered the West and stole land from

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the Indians, then I probably would have a very different perspective.” Reading about
accounts from different perspectives will create in a person different understanding about
the past as well as feelings for it. Whitney is sympathetic and open to different accounts.
Her inclination to hear stories about ordinary people’s experiences predisposes her to
alternative materials and topics.

However, if knowledge and feeling are two sides of a coin, in teaching, Whitney
tends to weigh the feeling side more. When Whitney said that she helped students
understand different perspectives, she was referring to her efforts to help students
empathize with those ordinary people. For example, her purpose of using primary
sources is to have a conversation starter and help students get some sense of the people’s
feelings. She hoped that students would be left with “Wow, that must have been very
hard, or wow, that must be so excited.” “And, then, that’s the kind of thing that I am
hoping will stick in their mind,” said Whitney. Whitney’s approach to help students think
in the shoes of people in the past, however, does not seem to be analytical, that is,
feelings are emphasized without discussing contents or issues, or providing perspectives
for more contextual understanding other than generalized feelings of hardship and
excitement.

One example of a common strategy she uses, following the textbook’s account
and supplementing materials or activities to help students relate to the people, illustrates
my claim. If students could understand how living in tenements and working in
sweatshops felt like for immigrants, the rationale goes that students would see things
fiom immigrants’ perspectives. In this sense, Whitney felt that she was teaching a

different perspective—the irnmigrants’ perspective— to students. One of the units that

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Whitney felt most comfortable to teach is the unit of Cities and Immigrants, which is the
title of chapter 19 of the textbook. She had students read the chapter first, answer all the
end-of-chapter questions, and then be prepared to do various kinds of activities that she
designed to help students feel for immigrants. She had students use their five senses to
imagine what it was like to work in the factory in the late 1800s and early 19005, and do
an art project based on the textbook account. “My goal for [the art project] very much
like other things is I want them to know what it felt like to be an immigrant.” “It’s that
whole ordinary person thing that I keep getting back to,” Whitney said,

What does it feel like to be thrown out in the street? What does it feel like to

work? It’s fourteen hours a day, six days a week. And, be poor and hopeless.

So that’s what I am after.
The next day after students do the activities of feelings for immigrant workers, Whitney
moved to the next activity having students report their research project on new inventions
during the industrialization period.

Whitney fills her curriculum with activities with an important goal to help
students experience and feel for history. It is important in multicultural and history
teaching that empathy is stressed. By emphasizing that students feel for people, Whitney
tries to be sympathetic to people who are removed or different from them. However,
there are pitfalls in her feeling over analysis approach. They occur when feelings are
taken to be sufiicient for understanding the multicultural past of America, or to be exact,
for understanding any history. The knowledge and analytic understanding that students
should base their understanding and sympathy upon is not given comparable attention in

Whitney’s class, and hence, appears to not be valued as much. The problem stems from

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(1) Whitney’s subject matter knowledge preparation which influences her judgment about
what materials are suitable for better historical understanding ; and (2) her beliefs about
teaching and learning, which make her believe that she is doing the right thing by having
students do different activities. I will discuss these two factors as I unpack Whitney’s
teaching. An example of Whitney’s feeling over analysis approach is her showing
students a Hollywood movie to teach students about what immigrants felt during late 19th
century. Let me develop this as an elaborated illustration of a more general point about
her teaching.
Feeling over Analysis. Whitney showed the movie Far and Away to students.

She believed that it would help students get the feelings of life for immigrants at the turn
of the century. Directed by Ron Howard and played by Hollywood stars Tom Cruise and
Nicole Kidman, Far and Way was released in 1992 as a romance movie set in 1892
against the background of Irish immigrant stories. What Whitney would like students to
learn is a sense of feeling—the working conditions and the hardships that they faced.
Though the movie intends more to be a romance story than an immigrant story, Whitney
considered the movie as an effective tool to help students get a sense of what immigrant
life was like during that period of time. Her introduction of this movie was:

We’re gonna do the [art] project and we’re also gonna watch a movie that is

really good because it shows so clearly all the things that the chapter is talking

about. It demonstrates the tenement; it demonstrates the political machine,

and work and a poultry factory that’s really disgusting. And, it’s a Hollywood

movie, so I think you’ll find it fun.... It’s a wonderful film. . .. It’s a

Hollywood film, but it’s really, I mean historical.

For this unit on Cities and Immigrants, the textbook account and the movie are the only

accounts to which the students have exposure and on which they base their understanding

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of the history. Whitney asked students to pay attention and said that she would not be
tolerant of distractions. No interruption was made when viewing the movie. According
Whitney, the movie was shown to give students some sense of immigrant experiences and
feelings. It took two and a half lessons before they finished viewing it. During the time
the movie was shown, Whitney was busy with her managerial work at her desk. She
graded papers, doing lesson plans, writing Thanksgiving cards, and other classroom
chores. At the end of the movie on the third day, when the light was turned on, Whitney
said:
A couple of things I want to point out. Or, I hope that you saw. All these
things that we have been studying—the Suffrage Movement and the Labor
Movement and Cities and Immigration. There are several themes that kind of
follow through time. When we were talking about Women’s Suffrage, I said,
“The things that these [people] endure, if you recall, that’s one example of the
kind of injustice that people endure when they are working for a social cause.”
There are things that people have suffered through when they are fighting for
civil rights. Things that laborers have suffered through when they tried to get
their labor practices. So, there are themes here, O.K.? And, it continues
through time. . ..
She made the conclusions and helped students see the big pictures of her themes. At the
end, she asked, “Does anybody have any other observation about the movie or comments
or opinions?” No question was raised except questions like when they’ll get their art
work back and a comment that there needs to be more boxing scenes in the movie. In
general, there were not a lot of opportunities for discussions in this or others of Whitney’s
classes. Although she did not lecture much, she often made conclusions like she did
above. She used different projects and activities to engage students, however, there did

not seem to be opportunities for students to express their views. Questions tended to be

teacher-directed and the teacher had answers in her mind.

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In her evaluation of the movie Gone with the Wind, Whitney said that “there are
more points of view than what was going on the Gone with the Wind,” that the slaves in
Gone with the Wind are portrayed as “happy people who are well-dressed and well-fed”
when in fact it is a “limited perspective.” In conclusion she said, “you could illustrate
some points of view using it, but it does not tell the whole story.” Whitney seemed o be
aware of biases that are involved in Gone with the Wind, yet, biases and
misrepresentations in Far and Away seemed to slip fiom her critical judgment. Critics4
of the movie ridiculed the “adolescent,” “feel-good” “cartoon” that does not have a clue
of what immigrants were—why Cruise became a boxer, instead of some more likely
occupation, such as a street-cleaner, a bod-carrier or a longshoreman? Whether students
will understand the hardships of immigrants through the movie representation of
immigrant lives—e.g., they lived in a brothel and Kidman worked in a poultry factory—is
in question. Instead of aiming to detail lives of immigrants, the movie in fact attempts to
sell its drama and spectacles. The story line is simple: a poor young Irish man and a rich
spoiled modern Irish lady headed to the new world where they’ve heard land was just
being given away in the Oklahoma Territories. The dream is that she can be free to ride a
horse the way she likes and he can grow wheat on his own property. They got their land
in the end in the final dramatic land-rush scene. The portrayal of hardships is superficial.
Boxing scenes and the land-rush scene are both visually exhilarating. As male students
expressed after viewing the movie, they liked the boxing scenes the best.

It appears that Whitney does not have the subject matter knowledge to evaluate

the validity of the movie as a historical movie. Part of Whitney’s curricular decision is

 

" See Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times and John F. Key, Washington Post.

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made upon her belief about what students need (which I discuss in the section on her
beliefs about teaching and learning). Whitney believes that students need variety to keep
them interested in history. Part of the decision is based on her understanding about the
subject matter that she is dealing with. Whitney does not have strong subject matter
knowledge. Her judgment about the appropriateness or adequacy of material rests on
whether something touched her personally. If so, it is good material. Whitney believes
that she is teaching students about perspectives by presenting to them materials that
would inspire in them sympathetic feelings. It turns out that perspectives are conflated to
feelings when the materials are not substantively contextual or when the materials are not
analyzed. The knowledge and analysis about immigrant experiences that should come
along with perspective-taking escaped Whitney’s attention.

It is not clear to me how Whitney’s students perceived the movie as a history text.
How did they perceive it as it relates to the topic that they studied and how did they make
judgments about aspects of history that was presented in the movie? This study cannot
answer these questions, however, the students’ general lack of curiosity (no questions
were asked) after viewing the movie suggests that the movie gave them little deep
impression about immigrant experiences during the 1890s. The movie seemed to be able
to reinforce, however, the rags-to-riches story, America as the land of opportunity, and
the myth that the West as an uncultivated no-man’s land. Without the subject matter
knowledge to unpack stereotypes behind the movie, Whitney seemed to lose the
opportunity to teach students the Native American’s perspective on the West to challenge
students to examine how and what Hollywood and popular culture shape the American

past, myth, and identity.

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Whitney’s feeling approach has a great potential for multicultural history teaching
because an important pedagogical emphasis on multicultural teaching is to teach students
to empathize with people different from them (Gollnick & Chinn, 1998; Nieto, 1992).
However, Whitney’s instruction was hampered by the imbalance between teaching
feelings and teaching content knowledge and analysis of historical events. Although she
has a multicultural conception of history and the disposition to teach history as more than
the traditional account, her subject matter knowledge does not support her to teach
multicultural history in complicated and challenging ways. Another dimension of the
problem of subject matter knowledge in her teaching is her view of history as information

rather than interpretation.

Information vs. Interpretgtion

Interviewer: When you used the movie Glory, what objectives did you try to

achieve through the movie?

Whitney: I am filling in gaps, well if I used the [textbook] for the basis of the
Civil War, the [textbook] gives one or two paragraphs to the African
American experience in the war. So, I need to supplement that and
that movie is one of the supplements that I use for the Civil War.

Interviewer: What do you want the students to come away with?

Whitney: I want them to see that it was more than just a group of white
generals who conquered the South and united the nation. There was
much more than that.

The above conversation demonstrates that Whitney tried to expose students to
different experiences, and that she views history as information that can be added and
inserted in her curriculum. She felt obligated to supplement materials in order to add
more information to topics that the textbook did not elaborate on. In this sense, Whitney

was trying to carry out what she said about teaching children different experiences of an

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event. The conversation also indicates that Whitney looked at the textbook as a source of
information rather than an interpretation of the past. Her ways of handling materials
demonstrate how both ways could explain her approaches to teaching history. Perhaps an
important roadblock to multicultural history teaching is this blurry distinction between
information and interpretation. When history is perceived as information rather than
interpretation, the tendency is to teach multicultural history as add-ons without
challenging the dominant narrative existing in the popular culture and the textbook.

Asked what purpose the textbook served in her class, Whitney responded, “a
resource; it’s a resource of information.” “It’s one source of knowledge just like the
videos are a source and the readings. It’s a form of resource,” Whitney tried to explain
more clearly. Although Whitney mentioned the biases that historians have and how
someone must decide what to include and what to leave out of the textbook, Whitney
never employed the word “interpretation.” Instead, she used “information” consistently.
This vocabulary difference may appear to be minor, however, it actually explains why
Whitney felt that she had done what multicultural advocates said about teaching
alternative perspectivess . To Whitney, biases came when historians pick and choose what
to include as information. Whitney does not think about historical inquiry as a “process”
of interpreting information. When asked if in college they had talked about doing

research, she asked, “like the process of somebody goes through to write a textbook? Or,

 

5 In commenting on the third history teaching viewpoint (see Appendix B), Whitney believes that she has
already tried to do things according to that view:

Interviewer: What about this part that says, “We could tell the story of the discovery of America fiom the
viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen
by the Cherokees, of the New Deal as seen by blacks in Harlem, etc.” Do you think that you would do this?
Whitney: I think to a degree, I already tried. I don’t you know like the discovery, since I start post Civil
War, the only thing that I really deal with is the New Deal and I do talk about the fact that everybody didn’t

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how historians dig up information?” In her view, historians find information and write
textbooks. Their efforts to weigh evidence, analyze, and interpret events are not things
that Whitney is aware of. In his well-read book What is History?, historian E.H. Carr
(1961) put,

In the first place, the facts of history never come to us “pure”, since they do

not and cannot exist in a pure form: they are always refracted through the

mind of the recorder. It follows that when we take up a work of history, our

first concern should be not with the facts which it contains but with the

historian who wrote it. (p.22)
It seems that although Whitney had begun to perceive history as stories not only about the
powerful, but the ordinary, her lack of understanding of historians’ work had effect on
teaching history as “information.” “Information” connotes facts or data. Unlike
information, interpretation refers to a “process of processing” the facts, using Carr’s
phrase (1961). This notion difi’ers from Whitney’s notion of facts and information as
history. Once facts and information are “dug out,” they should be analyzed and put into
context. History is interpretive because history is always asking the questions of “why”
rather than merely “what” and “how” (Carr, 1961). When thinking in terms of
information, one tends to think about questions of “what” and “how.”

Whitney’s treatment of the reading—titled Work and Politics—from the book

American Women6 (Rappaport, 1990) seemed to indicate this approach. She was more
interested in getting students to know the information, rather than exploring what it

means that women workers organized in the history of labor movement and suffrage

movement. Whitney had students take turns to read the article and stop the reading at

 

reap the benefits of the New Deal. So, I think already do this to a degree.

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various times to answer questions she prepared for guiding the reading. Take a look at

the questions she developed:

1.

>199???)

8.
9.
10.
11.

Why was it difficult to make a living at the SM. Clothing Co. factory in
New York?

What profession did Jane Addams establish and what did they do?
What kinds of women joined this profession? Why?

Why did Jane Addams start Hull House?

What were conditions like in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory?

What developed to try to improve working conditions?

How did Rose Schneiderman believe real and effective change would
come about?

What was the purpose of the Woman’s Peace Party?

What peaceful protest did the suffragists engage in?

How were the suffragists treated in jail?

What concern did some women have about passage of an Equal Rights
Amendment?

All questions above have pre-conceived answers because all answers were intended to be

found in the article. The “why” questions all had right answers that were supposed to be

found in the article. Whitney walked through the questions with them as they read the

article. Several students took turns to finish reading a section of the reading. They

stopped to answer the outlined questions.

Whitney: OK. So, the question no. 9, “what peaceful protest did they engage
in?” What kind of peaceful thing were they trying to do to get this point
across?

Male student: [inaudible] Banners.

Whitney: Was that the suffragists themselves. . .they were peacefully trying to
get their points across. It has something to do with banners, but what would
they do?

Brandon: Oh, I thought you were talking about. . .[inaudible]

Whitney: No, the peaceful, the peaceful protest. (pause; no one answered)

 

6 Rappaport, D. (1990). American Womgr: Their Lives in Their Word; New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Whitney drew articles from this book as primary sources for her topic on Sufli'age Movement.

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Well, actually, what’s that?
Female student: Do you think they were afraid?
Whitney: Well, they were, yes. And then they tried to sit there outside of the
Cameron House. I mean they were standing there with these banners that had
messages on them, you know “Give us the right to vote,” “Don’t women
deserve the right to vote too.” Silent, they were silent. They weren’t storming
down, hallooing, screaming, marching, they were standing there with their
banners making their injustice and their demands known written on these
banners, and then people who didn’t like what they had to say, there are the
ones who started to tear those down, but there peaceful protest was that they
were standing there with their messages written on the banners.
Brandon: So, basically they had to be silent, the pickets?
Whitney: Yeah, yeah. (pause for students to write down the answer).

Then, students took turns to read the following section until they stopped to answer

question no. 10.
Whitney: O.K., so no 10, how were the suffragists treated in jail?
You can pick any three or four things from there if you want to.
Brandon: Dirt.
Whitney: Like less than dirt. The physical abuse, the mental tomcat, not
being given medical treatment as they needed it, the poor conditions, not
having methods to keep warm. Food there wasn’t very pleasant either, but
you’ll get more about that in the video. (Pause to give students time to write
down the answers.)
What Whitney wanted was to help students have some feelings toward the women’s
sufferings, their courage, and have some appreciation for what women have gotten now.
She helped students get the added information and then concluded the article by saying
that there is a pattern or theme of people fighting for justice in history. Students listened

to what answers were given and complied with what Whitney demanded them to do—

finishing answering the worksheet as they went along reading and responding to the

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questions. The added information was treated as added information that was dug out and
presented to students as such.

Shermis and Barth (1982) worried about the “philosophical reduction” and the
“epistemological reduction” that many social studies teachers have'developed in their
daily teaching life. Shermis and Barth argued that tests, study sheets, workbooks, after-
the-chapter questions and discourse in classrooms have been compressed to an
undeviating formula; value judgments, philosophical assertions, intuitive opinions,
theoretical rationales, concepts, definitions or empirical facts are homogenized in the
same ontological food processor. The questions actually look like simple declarative
sentences turned into questions. Implicit in the forms of questions is the idea that
knowledge is transmitted rather than constructed. It this respect, cultural transmission
seems to be Whitney’s epistemological orientation in teaching, using Barr, Barth and
Shermis’ typologies (1977). Although she believed she was giving students opportunities
to express themselves, e.g., through art work and research projects, she was teaching
history in a traditional way. That is, by teaching history as information, students are
likely to come away with a notion that history is about gathering factual information of
the past rather than accounts that are carefully constructed by historians’ own questions,
selection of evidence, hypotheses, present climate, and their insights that make the
connections intelligible.

Textbooks tend to be brief about those who are not in power. Often the treatment
of the “multicultural” component is to give a woman or a black man a box of space to talk
about her or his achievements that are separate from the main narrative. Those added

information, if treated as “supplements” rather than interpretations (implying teaching the

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perspectives and constructive nature of history,) can lose the opportunity to
firndamentally address the goal that multiculturalists attempt to achieve—that is the idea
that everyone has a past that is equally important. When supplemented materials are
perceived as supplementary, it often means that the materials are used to support some
existing text. Whitney brought in articles and video accounts about women laborers and
women’s political and social movements. But, she treated them as supplements to the
textbook account to which she added more information. The lost opportunity is students’
chance to challenge the textbook interpretation’s of women—the shortness of the section
in the textbook and the voicelessness of women in most part of the history.

As Whitney perceived the textbook as a source of information, she relies on the
text heavily. Not viewing the textbook as an interpretation, Whitney was not inclined to
challenge the narrative. She did not see anything conflicting between the textbook
accounts of women, Native Americans and African Americans and the alternative
accounts she had on these groups of people. The difference to her is only that the
textbook says little about the groups and other books have more in-depth discussions.
Therefore, she would pull out some information from other books to add to the textbook.
The notion of history as information has effect on the way history is taught. Even though
Whitney has tried to obtain different sources to broaden her curriculum and to include
more ordinary people, the way the alternative materials are taught (as added information)
makes her multicultural teaching “additive.” Without revealing the epistemological
problem in history telling and viewing history as interpretation because of different
perspectives, the added information does not challenge the dominant history’s account

about women and minorities. Students are likely to rely on their major source of

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information—textbook—for a historical narrative.

Whitney’s pedagogy and subject matter knowledge do not seem to be mutually
supportive of each other. Her various kinds of instructional strategies which have good
intentions to engage students do not help bring a more authentic multicultural history
teaching in which ordinary people like immigrants and women are understood better. Her
subject matter knowledge, which includes both the understanding about the nature of
inquiry and the substance of the subject matter, seems to be inadequate for her to make
good use of her various teaching strategies. Below I will describe another pedagogical
approach Whitney uses—doing research, and discuss Whitney’s notion about historical
inquiry. Then, I will discuss the relationship between subject matter knowledge and

pedagogy in her case.

Doing History

One of the activities that Whitney does to add to her varied strategies is to have
students “do research.” This means that students “dig out” information from different
sources. In this research project on late 19th century and early 20th century
Industrialization, Whitney had students do research based on three sources—
Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book Encyclopedia and the textbook7. The two sets of
encyclopedias are shelved in her bookshelf in the front of the room.

She divided the class into groups of three and had them draw lots to decide which

topics they should be doing: Steel, Coal, Electricity, Thomas Edison, Telegraph,

 

7 Jordan, W. D., Greenblatt M. & Bowes, J. S. (1991). The Americans: A History. Evanston, Illinois:
McDougal, Littell & Company.

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Telephone, Oil, and Typewriter. As she instructed students to use the resources, she said
that she had already searched the information in the encyclopedia and made sure that all
the information that is needed is there. Therefore, students should find what they wanted
in them to accomplish their project. What is implied by Whitney’s guidance is that
historical knowledge is factual, recorded, and readily usable and comprehensible. It is not
something that needs to be processed, organized, analyzed, constructed or interpreted.
Students were given a sheet of paper that details some guidelines for this project the first
day of this research (see Appendix I). They were supposed to follow the guidelines to
“do research” according to those items and eventually be able to do a presentation
according to the information they obtained:

1. Define what your topic is

2. Explain the effect your topic had on

--the industrialization of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s

«business and industry

--people’s lives

3. Who were some of the people involved in the discovery, invention, sale,

use of the topic?

4. Any other interesting and relevant information
Those guidelines by themselves do not tell us how students went about doing their
research based on them or what Whitney expected them to do. For four days, students
were given the time to search for their topics. In the first day of instruction, Whitney
moved around the classroom to help students get on their task. She went to individual
groups and asked them how they were doing. She made sure that every group has at least
a source to work on—that no two groups were working on the same volume of the

encyclopedia; she gave suggestions as to what information to include and how they could

present their findings to the class. Whitney felt satisfied with what students had gotten in

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their presentations of their findings. After a four-day search for the project, all but one
group were ready to go".

Dan’s group volunteered to go first. Dan was assigned by his group members as
the presenter. During their research time, Dan was not looking into information needed
for their presentation, Ron did most of the job. Most of the time during the data
collection period, Dan and Greg were playing with each other. Whitney had come to their
group and asked how they were doing. She found that this group was ahead of other
groupsg. The group approached to the white board in front of the classroom. They put up
a transparency with explanations.

Whitney: O.K. What’s your topic? Oil and Petroleum?

Dan: Uh, I guess the question for number one is define our topic Oil (read
fi'om the instructional sheet). [Oil] is greasy substance and that it does
not dissolve in water, but it can be dissolved in lithia and gasoline. We
had like gasoline and petroleum for our topic. Definition of petroleum
(reading with head down from his notes). It’s a thick formable, yellow,
kind of black mixture of gas. .. (Talk without reading) Uh, I guess they
are like done by little tiny organisms that die on top of the. .. in the sea.
It’s also an ingredient of TNT. Number two: Explain the effect your
topic had on the industrialization of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
Before the Civil War, Americans didn’t drill for oil. They just like skim
it off the top of the, of the little creeks or whatever... And, they also
used it for rheumatism. I don’t know what that is, but,

Whitney: Like aching joints.

Dan: All right. And, in the 1850’s, people started using...

(Dan continues to fill in information for the questions on the instruction sheet,

including a quiz question: “What is the American football team that is related

to our topic?” He also shows a transparency that charts the process of oil
drilling.)

Whitney: Thank you guys. That’s very informative.

 

8 On the third and fourth day, it appeared that time was not used efiiciently. Many students were not
engaged on their tasks. Some had finished searching; some used the time to talk to and play with their
friends. The group that studied Thomas Edison did not do their work; eventually they did not do the
presentation. Whitney had told them that they should be ready to go the previous day and encouraged them
to call each other at home and prepare for this presentation. They did not do it.

9 She said that one of the drawbacks of doing a group work is that you will have some groups who finish
earlier and some groups finish late.

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Groups that followed them presented their findings in similar fashions. They dug out
information from three kinds of sources—textbook, World Book Encyclopedia, and
Encyclopedia Britannica—that they were instructed to use; they put the information on
papers and decided which part of the information will be presented on transparencies,
what games or activities they could play with the class, and what quiz questions they had
for the class. Students were instructed and ensured that they would get the kind of
information needed in the two encyclopedias and their textbook. Prior to doing this
activity, Whitney had not provided them contextual background to situate their research
in the nation’s industrial development. The activity itself was meant to be the major way
for students to gain necessary knowledge about industrialization. Whitney did not seem
to aim to help students understand issues involved with the economic transformation
during 1870-1900. Issues like relationships between big businesses and labors,
technological innovation and ecology, immigration and industrial expansion, and the
diversifying country during the time were not touched upon. Whitney’s research topics
and questions were mainly fact-oriented, hence, the answers could be “dug out.” To her
the nature of history or historical inquiry is about finding out what the facts or
inforrnations are out there, rather than developing perspectives and undertaking a process
of asking questions, finding evidence, and interpreting the facts that are obtained.

Her evaluation of the presentations showed that, in her conception, any
information that was put forward was new knowledge and good. Different groups used
different methods to present their topic. The group that studies Electricity played

Hangman with the class asking them questions like where Thomas Edison’s laboratory

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was located and the name of his assistant. Instead of reading out loud information from
their notes, the group that studied Coal put together a list of true and false questions to
present their topic. “Coal from the U.S. comes from west of the Appalachian mountains
and in between Pennsylvania and Alabama. True or false?” “Coal burning steam engine
was developed by James Watt. True or false?” Throughout their presentation, they asked
questions and provided more details as the class answered the questions.

Evaluation was based on whether or not students had the information that she
required on the instruction sheet. She checked those items as students presented their
topics:

_ 1. Define what your topic is.
_ 2. Explain the effect your topic had on
--the industrialization of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s
--business and industry
--people’s lives
_ 3. Who were some of the people involved in the discovery, invention, sale,
use of the topic?
__ 4. Any other interesting and relevant information.
_ 5. Quiz Question
_ 6. The thoroughness of the information gathered/created
__ 7. The quality of your presentation
_ 8 Use of in-class work time (this is part of your participation grade)
__ 9. Doing your share within the group.
Almost all groups that presented got all items checked, although not all groups got 100
points. I asked Whitney how the presentations went. “I’m reasonably satisfied,” she said.
“Students are up there and that’s the goal.” The only thing that she was not happy about
is that the presenters of two groups (groups on Oil and Electricity) read straight from their

notes. “I yawned. That’s boring,” she said. She would like students to use transparencies

to have a visual things up there. “I asked them if they want to use transparency, they just

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go ‘neah.’” “That’s the only thing that separates an A from a B,” said Whitney.

While many groups got 100 points, the Typewriter group got 95 points even
though they seemed to provide interesting information other than names and dates. They
provided information regarding the employment of women in 1870’s for workers in the
office, that the suffi'agist movement was influenced by the invention, and that minorities
were barred from office jobs. Whitney’s comment on their grading sheet is: “The only
suggestion I would make would be to put something on the overhead while you read the
note.” She did, however, put on the grading sheet beside the “quality of your
presentation” item—“good visuals to pass around.” This group drew a particular type of
typewriter that was invented during late 1800’s and passed it around as they talked.
Whitney’s comments pointed out that she was not looking into what sense students made
out of the information, but how they presented it. Every group’s information was equally
good and informative; the difference was which group put on a better presentation in the
sense of using visual aids or other methods to make the presentation interesting.

During the presentations, students were required to listen carefully and
respectfully. Most of them listened with a dull face. As groups finished, Whitney usually
would say, “OK.” Then, the class applauded unenthusiastically. Sometimes, she would
add a little more information, e.g., she had some remarks about difi‘ercnt styles of typing
to the Typewriter group. There were no questions asked either by the teacher or students
after each presentation. No discussions. While the information seemed to be abundant,
little or no connection was made to a conceptual understanding of the meaning of the
“second Industrial Revolution” and how it influenced the American society at the turn of

the century to big businesses, immigrants, urbanization, and labors.

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Although Whitney expressed that her goal for students was that she “didn’t just
want them to have a list of ‘these are the inventions and these are the people who
invented them,”’ opportunities for deeper understanding of the influence of the new
industrial inventions were not available. Whitney was more interested in the activity
itself rather than the content and analysis of the topic. Her first goal for this unit was “to
get the activity going in the class.” The research came about as she tried to avoid having
students “do the same thing day after day.” She paid more attention to how students
presented the information, e.g., more visual aids are better than reading straight from
notes, rather than what students presented. What students did was satisfactory to her.
The result of this research opportunity might be students’ reinforced ideas about doing
history as putting a bunch of facts together. Whitney was helping students to put together
a project through assisting them on the mechanics, that is, using encyclopedias as sources
and developing methods of presentations, instead of teaching them the perspectives,
analyses, and ways of doing historical research.

There are two dimensions about Whitney’s teaching that are important for our
understanding about decision to practice this kind of multicultural teaching. One is the
subject matter knowledge that Whitney manifests; the other are her beliefs about teaching
and learning. In addition to Whitney’s conception of history that contributes to her
multicultural teaching (e.g., including materials about other people), her subject matter
knowledge and beliefs about teaching and learning have direct impact on her teaching. I
will discuss the role subject matter plays in Whitney’s teaching. Beliefs about teaching

and learning will be discussed next.

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Subject Matter Knowledge
Whitney’s understanding about historical inquiry is that it is a process of “digging

out” facts and information, and that historical knowledge is “facts” and “information” In
contrast, historians perceive facts and information as evidence that needs to be examined.
They need to evaluate the validity of the facts and information, weigh them, and piece
them together using their perspectives. Whitney’s women’s history course might have
helped her broaden her views about history and gain more substantive knowledge about
women’s role in history. Yet, her limited exposure to history in college did not help her
learn about the doing of historical inquiry. Asked if she had experiences doing research
in college, she said,

Oh, I know I wrote some papers, but like the one big paper I wrote for the

women’s history class, I had to read two books and then write about, one was

from the early 1900’s and one was more contemporary, I had to compare the

two, but that wasn’t research. That was taking two books and going home and

reading them. It wasn’t like digging through encyclopedia or anything.
Reading secondary sources and coming up with one’s ideas about the past did not seem to
Whitney to be doing history. History is something that needs to be found and dug out.
To Whitney history is a process of collecting information rather than doing analysis and
interpretations. Information is taken as truth; little attention is paid to discern the validity
of accounts.

There are two dimensions of subject matter knowledge that are at issue. One is

the syntactical knowledge that I have been discussing. This is the knowledge about

historical inquiry, how historians ask questions and establish their accounts. Another is

the substantive knowledge that is necessary for teachers, which means the content

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knowledge of a subject matter (Schwab, 1964; Shulman, 1986). Research on teaching
and learning has shown that teachers need to be concerned about the epistemological
issues as well as the substantive knowledge when teaching the subject matter (Ball &
McDiarmid, 1990; Grossman, Wilson, & Shulman, 1989; Wineburg & Wilson, 1991).
Whitney’s case seems to reveal the importance of teachers’ subject matter knowledge
both in terms of understanding the nature of history and knowing the substantive
knowledge.

Throughout my description of Whitney’s teaching, Whitney’s syntactical
knowledge and substantive knowledge are intertwined. Although Whitney tried to teach
about immigrant lives, substantively she does not know enough about the diversity of
immigrants and the their stories in order to engage students in more contextual
understanding about their experiences. As a result, immigrant experiences are reduced to
general feelings of hardships and difficulties. Her syntactical knowledge cannot be
helpful to her to explore issues because history is considered by her to be only factual and
informational. Although she believes that history is more than white men’s history, the
telling of other people’s histories to Whitney means adding more information rather than
a matter of interpretation. Adding more information is not totally wrong because we do
need information to be informed. But information is not neutral. They need to be put
into context and perspective in order to have meaning. And when history is construed as
informational, factual and ready to be picked up, there is little room for analysis and
controversy. Syntactically, Whitney seemed to treat added facts and information as
knowledge. Students’ digging out facts on the inventions during the Industrialization was

perceived by her to be “informative” and getting knowledge. Her efforts to get students

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to feel for immigrants were considered to be getting knowledge. Because Whitney lacks
adequate syntactical and substantive knowledge in history, the knowledge that she tried to
help students have was undifferentiated.

Banks (1995) discussed how historical events could be viewed from different
perspectives. He argued that it is an important aspect of multicultural history teaching
that students understand the constructive nature of history. History as it is perceived by
one ethnic group, as it has been from European Americans, tends to render historical
narrative fixed and unbalanced. If one believes in Manifest Destiny, one fails to see how
those who were conquered viewed the same event of conquest. And, by contrasting
accounts, students learn about how different ethnic groups experienced the same event,
how groups related to each other in history, and how we can have a larger memory
(Takaki, 1998).

Whitney’s case seems to point out that teachers’ deeper understanding about the
nature of history and more substantive knowledge about other stories is important to
multicultural history teaching. We have multiple examples of evidence in teacher
learning research that teachers need to experience a different kind of learning themselves
in order to have better opportunity to teach differently (Carter, 1990; Feiman-Nemser &
Featherstone, 1992; Feiman-Nemser & J ., 1996). Whitney’s limited exposure to history
as a discipline and historical research hinders her teaching. While she has the desire to
teach students how to do research and find knowledge themselves, she could only confine
research to “fact hunting“ in textbooks and encyclopedias. Similarly, while she has the
commitment to include experiences of women and ethnic minorities, she is limited by her

substantive knowledge about them. In the end, history in her instruction appears to

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involve more facts than interpretations, more information than analysis, and more fact-

reporting than conceptual understanding.

Beliefs about Teaching and Learning

Besides subject matter knowledge, Whitney’s beliefs about teaching and leaming
equally play important roles. Because of the dominance of white culture, most teachers
are not educated to become multicultural thinkers. Most of the teaching force in America
is white females who grew up in communities where they had little exposure to issues of
diversity (Cazden & Mehan, 1989; Zeichner, 1993). Historically, teachers also have not
been trained effectively to reflect upon the way they were taught and challenge their
assumptions about teaching and learning. In the past decades, more and more teacher
education institutions are interested in preparing teachers who can reflect upon their
assumptions about teaching and learning and can adequately meet the needs of the
increasing diverse population of the US (Baptiste, Baptiste, Gollnick, & American
Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Commission on Multicultural Education,
1980; Craft & Great Britain. Advisory Group on Teacher Education, 1981; Larkin &
Sleeter, 1995; Yeo, 1997; Zeichner, 1993). Whitney had not had multicultural
preparation in her teacher education program. Her beliefs about what her role is as a
teacher and assumptions about student learning shed light on her approaches to teaching

history.

The Teacher’s Role

Whitney perceives herself not as a specialist, but a social studies generalist. She

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said that with her multi-disciplinary social science major, she did not become a real
expert in any subject matter area. Asked if she would worry about her lack of expertise in
the subject matters, she pondered,
Sometimes, but when I think about my teaching style and about what the state
(university) and what the other social studies teachers are saying about where
instruction is heading that I’m supposed to be a coach, not a lecturer, I
don’t worry about it quite so much. I’m supposed to put resources in their
hands and guide them in certain directions, but I don’t have to know all the
facts.
Whitney believes that being a coach has to do with her teaching style. A coach is
someone who gives skills rather than giving students direct knowledge. In
implementation, Whitney demonstrated that her definition of skills are technical skills
rather than intellectual skills. There is an assmnption in the statement that content
knowledge is not that important and that she has adequate knowledge that is necessary to
teach. Although Whitney realizes that she is not an expert in history or in other subject
matter areas, she feels comfortable that as a teacher she teaches students skills of finding
resources. Embedded in her statement is a dichotomous idea of content vs. process or
knowledge vs. skills. She said that she prefers to teach students “how to fish,” than “give
students the fish.” That is, she believes that teaching students skills is more important
than feeding them with content knowledge. However, historians and history educators
argued that this is a false dichotomy. History teachers cannot teach skills without
teaching students contents to build their skills upon (Levstik & Barton, 1997; Nash,
Crabtree, & Dunn, 1997). Whitney’s weakness in teaching students how to do research

reveals that doing research has to be grounded in the teachers’ subject matter

understanding, which is not devoid of content.

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Another analogy that Whitney employed to describe her role in instruction is that
she is “almost like a manager” where she “provides the tools and ensures that they are
being used adequately or appropriately.” Asked what the tools are that she would
provide, she said, “the videos and the books and take them into the library, notes on
occasion, uh, note-taking skills, art supplies, art tools, things like that, research skills.” It
appears that “tools” means both the resources and methods that she used; they also
include research skills which means teaching students how to use encyclopedia, the
intemet, and card catalogs where they could dig out information. Whitney’s belief about
her role as a teacher directly relates to her understanding about her subject matter. Her
understanding about what she needs to know as a teacher determines what she believes
her professional role should be. Because history is construed as information and feelings
for people’s trials and tribulations, Whitney’s strategies are to create opportunities for
students to do these things by providing what she believes to be useful skills and
resources.

Another way to understand how Whitney defines herself as a teacher is through
her prior experiences as a student. “In high school, we had a teacher that almost everyday
he stood at the podium and he lectured,” Whitney recalled. She felt strongly about her
high school teachers’ lecture-oriented instruction, “it didn’t leave much of an impression
on me because it was the same thing day after day after day.” Before long in my
observation of Whitney’s teaching, it was very clear that she has a principle for her
pedagogy—variety. Because of the negative experience with lecturing, Whitney’s
focuses so much on her pedagogy that it becomes a major curricular consideration.

Asked how she went about designing a lesson, she said that she thought about what she

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wanted students to know and be able to do and what is the best way to achieve her goals.

In addition to that, she said,
But, you know what, it’s so important to me to have a variety of activities.
Sometimes, I go past that stuff and say, gosh, we’ve been having a lot of
whole-class discussions lately, I think we need to break that up a little bit, I
think it’s time for group activities, or it’s time for them to work alone. 80,
sometimes, sometimes I just decide, we need variety, they need to be doing
different things to stay interested, what haven’t we done in a while and do
that.

This principle applies to her decision to have a research project on
Industrialization. She had her eye on having students do a group project. “My first goal
is to get the activity going in the class and my second goal is to have them understand the
impact of the inventions had on people’s lives, so how can I do those things together, and
this is how that activity came about.” She is a strategic practitioner who believes that
different forms of the instruction would keep students interested rather than doing the
same things repeatedly. In this sense, she is a manager of activities (as well as resources)
in class. Maintaining student interest through projects and different activities is her
primary concern. However, as a coach of intellectual tools, Whitney seems to be short of
knowledge preparation and skills of coaching. Merely providing encyclopedias, books,
videos, art supplies, or notes is not going to help students develop the kind of analytical
capacities for their future learning.

Whitney’s goal for her students was not for them to memorize dates and names,
but to develop general “feeling” for the U.S. History. Asked how would she respond to
people who questioned the generalization she gave to students without specific facts to

support the “feeling,” she answered in a way to reflect about her own beliefs:

OK. I guess they are also gonna leave my class with the skills and know

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where to find facts. So, I mean as history gets through times, the size of our
history gets bigger and bigger, so nobody can memorize all the facts. So, if
they know where to go to find facts if they want them. Yeah, I learn how to
use books and encyclopedias and the intemet and the card catalogs. I know
how to use all those tools and if I want to know about who was President
during 1920’s, I know exactly where to go to find that out. Then, that can find
out anything. They don’t just have a store in their brain, I know these a
hundred and fifty facts about U.S. History and that’s all I know. They have a
tool that they can find out anything. So, I would rather they have a general
feeling and then the tools and the skills to find facts when they choose to
do that. But, then question is how do I respond when somebody says, “they
don’t have any facts to support their generalizations.” Gosh, I guess, let’s see,
maybe, I don’t know if I have thought that through. I’ve been believing it for
so long, I guess stop reflecting on why I believe it. (silent)

I: When did you start to believe in this?

T: Probably not too long after I started my college, that portion of my college
education that was in teaching. You know I was doing my first couple years
of general education, I didn’t give it much thought. And, then I decided I
wanted to be a teacher, I think I was heavily influenced by the things that I
have read from the Teacher Education classes, discussions that I had, probably
some of that I adopted from my professors.

1: Your professor used that approach—the feelings instead of

T: Instead of the facts, yeah. And, I think I was told directly it’s more
important to know how to go and find information than to memorize facts.
And, I think it’s the old give them a fish and eat for a day, teach him how to
fish for a life thing. I’d rather they have the skills than little bits and pieces [of
facts].

I asked her further what skills would she like students to develop in her class, she

said, “I don’t want them to just accept everything they are told. One skill I want them to
leave this class with is—Is this valid information?” She gave an example of having
students do research on a historical person:
We were in the library and they were doing some research on a historical
person. And, a couple of kids came to me and said, “Well, Jackie Robinson,

an American baseball hero, legend. This book says he’s batting average was

this and this book says he’s something else. And, I said, “O.K., so what do
you make of that?” “Well, somebody’s wrong.” Well, he looked a little
firrther and he discovered that one of them was a life-time batting average and

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the other one was up to a certain points of his career. So, he was able to take a

closer look and said, “What exactly is this number?” What does it mean? So,

he was digging in a little bit deeper to what was there.
These conversations demonstrate that Whitney was thinking of ‘yalidity” in terms of
“accuracy” of facts and information. As a result, being a good teacher means being able
to provide students tools to find that information. While Whitney’s teacher education
program’s philosophy that teaching thinking skills is more important than having students
memorize facts, Whitney was not able to connect her subject matter with the thinking
skills that her teacher education program aimed to cultivate. This goes back to the old
argument that pedagogy and subject matter are inseparable (Dewey, 1964), and that
teacher education programs should help students make that bridge. Whitney was not sure
how to respond to viewpoint number four on multicultural history teaching (see Appendix
E) where analytic skills for student historians are addressed. She read, “studying history
should begin with learning the habits of mind, the skills and way of thinking that produce
legitimate historical generalizations appropriately supported and documented from
reliable sources.” “This is a huge thing to swallow here,” she responded not knowing
how to think about it. Asked if this is not feasible in high school, Whitney replied, “Uh,
oh, boy, not at this point. At least I don’t know, I certainly don’t have access to enough
resources to make this doable. And, I don’t think I have the skills in training kids to do
this.”

While Whitney was willing to see the past from perspectives of minorities and

women, she was not equipped with the analytic tools—for example, the ability to make

the distinction between facts and interpretations. Facts and interpretations are both taken

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as information in Whitney’s instruction. While it is true that teachers “do not need to
know all the facts” (no one does), they do need to know enough to be able to analyze and
make generalizations. Quite frequently Whitney was not able to answer students’
questions in class, and she would be honest and said, “I don’t know.” Sometimes, she
was ambiguous about her facts and said “something like tha .” When a student said that
her fiiend’s grandmother said that Hitler was a Jew and that his father died of a Jewish
doctor, Whitney thought, “Oh, well, good, we have more knowledge here in the room
than I thought. Let’s bring it out.” Without some critical attitude toward both the facts
and generalizations she made, Whitney seemed to be a manager rather than a coach as a
teacher. She not only was not able to criticize the dominant narrative about immigrants’
lives (i.e., being hard and difficult, fulfilling their American dreams, etc.), but reinforced

some of the “feelings” that the public cultures have been reproducing in movies.

Assumptions about Students

Whitney uses a lot of her personal experiences in thinking about teaching and
learning, e.g., lecturing is bad and feelings are important in learning history. Her
assumptions about what students need also stem from her experience as a student from
the same community. She believes that lecturing is not good for student learning and that
students need variety to stay interested in history. Difi’erent teaching styles are her way to
avoid boredom in history classes. Like Lance, Whitney assumed that her students would
have narrow understanding about diversity, hence, she believes that her bringing in
different materials would broaden their minds. Therefore, there is a general assumption

about her student population and student learning.

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Whitney seems to pay relatively less attention to individual differences. Her
instruction is not made based on her understanding about the specific students she has.
There was a group of students that did not complete their research task and in the end did
not do the presentation. Whitney had told them that they should be ready to go the
previous day and encouraged them to call each other at home and prepare for this
presentation. They did not do it. Whitney said that she did not know what they were
thinking. One of the students in the group was Wayne, a student who often laid his body
against the wall and sometimes closed his eyes. Wayne said to me that he likes debates;
he likes to “take a side and argue.” He said that he just likes history from the Civil War
down; he likes World Wars. These are areas that Whitney is not interested in. Asked if
there are any students whom she is concerned about, Whitney said, “Wayne because he’s
not doing anything.” “I don’t know if Wayne knows what he is thinking,” said Whitney.
Whitney did not seem to know what her students, at least Wayne, had in mind.

When designing a lesson, Whitney said that she thinks about what she would like
students to know and what will help make the class interesting. It seems that the
assumptions she has about student learning are mostly drawn from her own experience as
a student rather than from her understanding about her students. She did not think about
Diana, her Mexican American student, until we had the interview conversations about
whether students’ ethnicity play roles in her curriculum. “It’s starting to have an effect,
yea,” Whitney responded. Students were mentioned in our conversations only when I
purposefully probed her views about students. She talked about students generally—e.g.,
they are conservative and that history teaching has to be fun in order to interest them. It

appears that her prior experience of being a student is powerful in shaping her views

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about students and what students need.

Whitney’s beliefs about teaching and learning reinforce her approaches to
teaching history using a variety of teaching strategies to assist in students’ obtaining
information and maintain student interests. Such beliefs are closely related to her subject
matter knowledge. Because history is perceived as factual and informational, strategies
that aim to dig out information and inspire feelings are used, rather than strategies that try

to analyze historical perspectives and interpretations.

Discussion

Whitney’s inclination to teach feelings and ordinary people’s experiences is
important in multicultural history teaching. In contrast to Lance, she is much more
willing to explore what is missing from the mainstream narrative. Although not
systematically, Whitney looks for alternative materials. Her ability to relate to people’s
feelings through reading alternative materials and her disposition toward teaching about
other people are important to her multicultural teaching. Her conception of history is
inclusive, even though she does not have grounded understanding about historical
inquiry. Based on what she knows, she tries to carry out what she believes to be
important and to work in high school classrooms.

Much of what she believes to be important and to work is based on her own
experiences as a learner. As a learner, she experienced the power of feeling for women’s
history. She realized how important it is to view history as ordinary people’s history. As
a learner, history was boring when teachers lectured day after day. She judged that

Students need variety to stay interested in history. These two goals are satisfied from

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Whitney’s point of view when she designs strategies that help students understand
feelings and experiences. What is challenging about teaching feelings and experiences is
whether or not the teacher has the subject matter knowledge to help students ground their
feelings in substantive understanding about what happened.

A central issue in Whitney’s case is the role subject matter plays in her teaching.
It determines how she defines an inclusive history—adding information about ordinary
people without discussing issues, perspectives, values, stereotypes, biases, evidence, and
constructive nature of history in historical accounts. The information is given and
assumed to be new knowledge when the information has not yet been processed and put
into context.

It seems that mere recognition of the multicultural past of history is not enough,
although it is certainly helpful. Whimey’s multicultural conception of history enables her
to look for alternative materials. However, conception of history by itself does not help
the teacher teach in ways that are analytical, contextual and conceptual. Teachers need
the intellectual skills (syntactical knowledge) and the content knowledge (substantive
knowledge) in order to make sense of the materials that they get. They will be able to
judge whether a movie is historical and what biases are imbedded in it based on these two
dimensions of knowledge.

Whitney helps us see the importance of distinguishing information and
interpretation. The purpose of making the distinction is important in the sense that
teachers know the difference between teaching ethnic holidays and heroes as uncontested
information and teaching them in some context when the information can be understood

fi'om historical, social, political, economic, racial, gender or class perspective. Perhaps

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the blurry distinction between information and interpretation is one of the main reasons
why teachers tend to teach multicultural history/ social studies using contributions or
additive approaches. The challenge is that teachers need to know their subject matter
well and develop intellectual skills to be able to process information themselves.

Whitney also reminds us how important one’s past experiences are to one’s
teaching. From her subject matter exposure to women’s history, her negative feelings
toward lecturing, ideas about coaching, to her belief that students need variety to stay
interested, prior experiences shape a lot of what Whitney believes to be important in
teaching history. Prior experience sometimes informs, sometimes misinforms. The
women’s history course may leave Whitney a good foundation to view history to be more
than one group of people’s story. It was not successful in helping Whitney learn about
what it means to do history and hence how to read historical accounts intelligently.
Whitney, hence, is left with partial knowledge about the nature of history. Whitney’s
negative feelings toward lecturing resulted in her applying the notion of skills over
memorization, which she took to be skills over contents. Whitney also believes that
students need variety in order to be interested in learning. Understanding about a
teacher’s approach to multicultural teaching involves understanding the teacher’s many
dimensions of past experiences.

Whitney’s case illuminates for us that the challenge for multicultural history
teaching is much more than having an inclusive conception of history. Subject matter
knowledge and past experiences are also areas where challenges arise for multicultural

teaching.

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Conclusion

Whitney is by no means a teacher who only celebrates ethnic holidays and heroes.
She looks at the past with an understanding that everyone has a past and that the past we
learn about is often dominated by those in power. Her conception that history is larger
than we traditionally thought orients her to locate resources in women’s experiences,
Natives Americans and African Americans in the Civil War and World War 11. She
wanted to help students understand irnmigrants’ lived experiences.

However, Whitney’s non-traditional conception of history does not help her
develop deeper knowledge in history and pedagogical content knowledge. Without
having substantive and syntactical knowledge in the subject matter, Whitney’s various
teaching strategies that aim to interest students cannot engage students in more contextual
and conceptual understanding about historical events. Without the grounding in subject
matter knowledge, Whitney’s teacher identity as a coach shifts instead to that of a
manager of mechanical skills rather than intellectual skills. Whitney’s teaching on
multicultural history, hence, becomes additive. The added multicultural materials appear
to have limited effect on students’ understanding about difl‘erent groups of people’s
perspectives and experiences. The textbook remains the major source of historical

knowledge in Whitney’s classroom.

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CHAPTER V

JERRY: MAINSTREAM HISTORY, STANDARDS, AND MULTICULTURAL
HISTORY TEACHING

Asked when would be the best times to observe his teaching about the

multicultural past of America, Jerry answered:

Anybody studying teaching multicultural, I mean, you ain't gonna have
enough time because every single time you look, you are gonna see something
new. I mean multicultural is not a new concept. It was always here. God, we
have always been a very diverse people. It's just now it's become practical for
people, so we give it all these labels, but if you look at what multicultural is,
it's called "learning about us." "Us" meaning each other, which we should
have been doing in the first place. But, now, it's just politically correct now
for people to make this big issue about it. It's like suddenly that is new and
invented, so they want to look at this ingenious way of integrating each other.
I applaud the efi'ort, but really don't understand what you are all doing... I
really don't because when I go there, I am trying to guide and instruct people.
If you want to break them down into groups, that's fine. I mean, I am
conscious of the ethnic groups, so as I teach, I bring in the ethnic perspectives
that facilitate their learning, enhancing our comprehension and understanding
of each other. So, I don't see it as really new. I see it as on-going. As far as
any best, there is no best time [to study multicultural teaching in my
classroom].

Jerry is black. He grew up in Trinidad. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen and had served in
the U.S. armed forces for nine years prior to becoming a teacher. He has been teaching in
Oakland High School, a diverse inner-city high school, for seven years. His students
include European Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and few Asian
Americans. This long quote tells part of the story about Jerry. It sets the stage for Jerry's
philosophy about what multicultural history is and how he might teach history from that
perspective.

In his understanding, "history" is multicultural. The multicultural past is already

there. This means both the things that happened (“we have always been a very diverse

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people) and what has been studied about the past (“it’s called learning about us”).
Historians made the same distinction about history (e.g., Bailyn, 1994). Often, Jerry does
not use the term "history," but calls the study of the past "cultural studies," a term that
scholars who focus on studying a broader range of cultural topics use (During, 1999;
Fuery & Mansfield, 1997; Traube, 1992). In the statement, Jerry implies that he has been
teaching "multicultural history," except that he does not use the term to describe his
practice. He further illustrates his mindset for teaching multicultural history as being
"conscious of ethnic groups." He says that he brings in "ethnic perspectives" in practice
and he aims at facilitating students’ understanding of each other. Asked when would be
the best time to capture his multicultural teaching, Jerry answered, "there is no best time."
The assumption is that multicultural history is constantly present in, if not permeating, his
curricultun.

In what ways is multicultural history "there" in Jerry's curriculum? What does he
make possible? Why does he teach the kind of multicultural history the way he does?
What challenge does he face in trying to enact his version of cultural studies?

Jerry has a very sophisticated understanding about the nature of history and about
the need for learning history from multicultural perspectives. His conception about the
nature of the subject matter makes him aware of biases embedded in the textbook
account. His knowledge about Euro-centric history and its unequal treatment of people
of color and women enables him to highlight important concepts to students. Yet there
are difficulty in taking these conception and knowledge and trying to enact a kind of
practice that transforms the existing curriculum. While Jerry may believe that he has

firlfilled his goals to bring in ethnic perspectives to his U.S. History class, from the

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standpoint of multiculturalists (Banks & Banks, 1989; Nieto, 1992; Sleeter & McLaren,
1995a), his is an "additive" approach of multiculturalism.

Jerry said that he is loyal to the U.S., but he is also one of its biggest critics. He
does not always teach what the textbook says. Jerry employs many ways to “do the right
thing”—“giving students more” than they could get in traditional classrooms. In his
attempt to teach students more than what the textbook says, he faces real challenges in
practice which prevent him from doing fully what he believes to be important. Still, Jerry
tries to maximize his knowledge and resources to help students learn. I will illustrate
Jerry’s articulated conceptions about history and multicultural history first. Then, his
classroom practices will be described and explained using his conceptions of history. I
will discuss factors that influence Jerry’s teaching and conclude with perspectives about

what Jerry teaches us.

Conceptions of History

I don't think that I have my students say, "OK. This is exactly what
happened" 'cause usually I tell them, "the one thing you got to understand... is
history is the lies we agree to tell people." You tell them that. That's how I
define history. The lies we agree to tell people, or which we can agree upon.
Because you look at every incident. You talk about the Boxer Rebellion
where it's somebody who is European, the way it's predominantly taught in a
European school, I bet you it's gonna be different if it's taught in China.

Of the three teachers I studied, Jerry is most articulate and sophisticated about the nature
of history. Jerry holds master's degrees in Social Studies Education and History. He had
done an oral history project with descendants of slaves in North Carolina, where he

attended a black college. The statement above shows his understanding of the

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interpretive and often contentious nature of history. It also reflects how Jerry looks at
historical events from different perspectives. In his short opinion paper, Alan Singer
(1993) said, “multiculturalism is based on the idea of multiple perspectives—that it is
possible to view and understand an event or an era in more than one way” (p.284). To
the Europeans, the Age of Exploration may mean the unleashing of waves of progress
and prosperity. However, as Singer indicated, not if you were a Taino, a Yoruba, a
Malay, or a European peasant.

Jerry described himself as someone who likes to take things apart and examine
events from different perspectives. "I am big on taking an incident, a person, a fact or the
past, and analyze it to a degree," he said. One of Jerry's favorite approaches to teaching
U.S. History is to discuss a narrative in the textbook and give his opinions on the text
critiquing the textbook presentation of what happened. Asked why he did that, he said,
"One of the reasons I do that is simply because I don't want them to become comfortable
in any one explanation that is given."

Along with the belief that historical events can be viewed from different
perspectives, Jerry believes that historical narratives (e.g., textbook accounts) should not
be taken to be the absolute authority of knowledge. That is, he is aware that the authors
behind the textbook are interpreting the past from their perspectives. After he expressed
that he would not want his students to be indoctrinated into one conclusion, Jerry said
that he does not believe that “just because [someone] got a Ph.D. and wrote the
textbook,” he could become the absolute authority and determine people’s understanding

about the past.

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The concept that textbook accounts are not conclusive is important when teaching
multicultural history, that is, when one tries to view the past from alternative
perspectives. In most textbooks, information about minorities is not from their
perspectives. Textbooks do not represent their stories; they appear as added information
to the established European American account of the past. The current multicultural
recipe for school history still leaves the Euro-centric master narrative intact. Minorities
and women are not viewed as agents, but mostly portrayed as victims or singular heroes
who somehow do not help you understand the groups of people they represent (Sleeter &
Grant, 1991). Their presence does not affect the narrative of the events. Conclusions
have already been made. Added information about the plight of Native American does
not change the concept about Manifest Destiny and the West as the American symbols
for progress and prosperity. Such a recipe in texts leaves the teachers a lot of space for
reinterpreting and challenging accounts that are generally presented in mainstream
textbooks. Evans (1989) found that teachers who hold the conception that history is
interpretive and that different people are entitled to their interpretations as long as they
are supported by evidence tend to teach history from alternative perspectives.

Jerry seems to have this kind of understanding about the nature of the subject
matter needed to help students understand the multicultural past of America. His
understanding is expressed even more clearly in his explication of what history is.

To me every time something happens and it’s chronicled whether on people,
in our memory, or anywhere, that is the story of an event within our race,
within our kind, within our culture, within our country, our state, our home,
everything, to me is history. History to me is it never ends. . .. History to me
is never dead. The events may be dead. But, the fact that those events of the

past influence the present means that it’s alive. And, then when the firture
comes that which is present means that it’s continuous.

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Two additional important concepts are identified in this statement. First, history is about
everything in the past. It is recorded different ways, including through human memory,
and is about everything, including family history. This implies that history is not just
about political leaders, war heroes, elite, or people of a certain ethnicity, nationality, and
culture. Second, history is continuous. Our present is affected by how we perceive the
past, and the future will be affected by how we understand our present. Jerry explained
that if we do a good job “connecting to the past,” then, “that will give us insight into the
future.” One stands in the present looking back trying to get insight for the future. “That
would make you a better person here [at the present],” Jerry said. He described that
learning history is like learning how to build a bridge between the past and present, and
then between the present and the future.

If one brings a partial understanding about the past, one might perpetuate
mistakes, and create a future that repeats the past, according to Jerry’s logic. How we
understand the multicultural past and what stories of the past we choose to believe in will
determine what we do now and our decisions for the future. Jerry observed,

If we were to take Nazi Germany. Right? If we were to take slavery. If we
were to take uh, say the Boxer Rebellion. If we were to take Stalirrism. You
know if we were to take Euro-centric culture and bring it in the present as it's
truly reflected, I mean what's gonna happen? You're gonna have a tremendous
amount of people who are very bitter simply because that which we tend to
focus on from the past was so negative for so many sub-groups. Sub-groups
meaning minorities. So, if we were to take that into the present and not try to
get a commonality or ground with it between the bitterness, then as you move

from the present into tomorrow, can you picture what we're gonna be facing
with? You're gonna be facing the same past.

In those conversations about what history means, Jerry demonstrates his thoughtfulness

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about the nature of historical accounts as well as his insights about learning the past from
diverse perspectives. His is a powerful argument for a more inclusive history, one that
according to Jerry will help minorities face their present and future with “a lot more
strength.” Our partial understanding about the past will impact us in how we understand
the present, and hence, perpetuate the biased views and policies in the future.

Another argument that Jerry makes about multicultural history is that one does not
just concern about the plights of slaves, Native Americans in the Trail of Tears, Japanese
Americans in the Japanese Intemment in World War H, and other minorities. One should
present a more rounded picture of the groups. The Chinese are often portrayed as
railroad workers and miners. Jerry questioned, “everyone of them?” Jerry explained that
his knowledge about different ethnic groups is not sufficient, but he can still make
judgements about historical interpretation from the “human point” or “human logic.”
That is, he would question the accuracy of historical presentation when stories seem to be
one-sided or do not ring true to his commonsense. “If my presence was there in difl‘erent
ways, why are you then only showing me my presence in a way that is negative?” Jerry
argued.

Another point that Jerry cares about is the necessity to have a more inclusive
history. “You say we’re not a melting-pot that we are salad—cauliflower, greens and
everything, but when I look into the salad, I tend to see more cauliflower than the others,”
Jerry commented on the cultural debates in the country about what history should be
taught in schools. He believes that history texts should be more inclusive. Current
textbooks are Euro-centric in his judgement. “Where are the Asians?” asked Jerry. “It’s

more a reinforcement of their stories rather than my story,” Jerry said critiquing the

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textbook that he is using.

“The curriculum should include us; it should be a reflection of America,” he

suggested.
You can’t just tell them about George Washington and Patrick Henry. You
need to find out about other people, other ethnicities around that period. So,
that student, that individual could understand that from ethnic point of view.
They too were involved if they were involved. If they were not, then you tell
them why not. But, you can’t just talk about it in isolation. That is where
balkanization comes in.
Since the textbook is not inclusive, there are things that teachers can do to remedy the
flaws that exist in the textbook. Jerry seems to be suggesting the following approaches to
multicultural teaching: (1) teachers should learn and teach about those people who are not
included in an event or a period of time; and (2) ethnic histories should not be told in
isolation; they should be part of the American story taught in relation to the histories of
other groups of people. If taught in isolation, ethnic studies could become ethnocentric,
which in Jerry’s view may become problematic for the unity of the nation.

While many of Jerry’s ideas are valuable and thoughtful, when those ideas are
evaluated against his practice, there appears a discrepancy between his vision and his
practice. Jerry does not always teach what he preaches. And, when he does (e.g., include
ethnic perspectives), he does it in a way that does not look very different fi'om traditional
practices—that is, adding information and lecturing his point. From this perspective, his
is not very far away from Lance’s approach. Still, his awareness of and understanding
about racial issues allow him to highlight points that Lance, for example, would not raise.

Those points provide students some alternative perspectives, which will be discussed

later. However, although Jerry holds a broad conception about history, he has difficulty

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going beyond mainstream U.S. history. His broad vision does not necessarily guide him
to teach multicultural history in ways that are constructive (Banks, 1994; Korbrin, 1993)
and in-depth.

What makes multicultural history teaching difficult? How does a teacher who has
knowledge about history and visions for a more inclusive history cope with his
cuniculum? What goals does he have for students? Below, I will describe Jerry’s
practice using his core history conceptions, namely, different perspectives, text as
interpretation, past-present connection, and inclusion, as the framework for examining his

practice of multicultural history.

Multicultural History Teaching

Jerry prides himself for being “unorthodox” and “non-traditional.” His teaching
differs from how he was taught in schools and in college, which was more “sedentary”
and concentrate on “more facts.” Jerry believes that in his teaching he does things that
are more than fact-finding and memorization. The textbookl is the “background” for
what he is saying; and he analyzes the text to an extent to provide students alternative
views. Typically, during his lessons, students take turns to read the text out loud. Then,
Jerry would “go fi'om there to do something else.” Using his conception of history as a
fi'amework, below are my descriptions of Jerry’s practice. Through these descriptions I
hope to elucidate his pedagogy as well as what multicultural history means in his

classroom.

 

' Jerry’s school district adopts this textbook:
Davidson J .W. and Batchelor, John E. (1994). The American Nation. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

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Different Perspectives

One of the important points in Jerry’s conception about multicultural history is the
idea that historical events can be viewed from multiple perspectives. An example of his
teaching about difierent perspectives is his elaboration on the invention of the cotton gin
during the unit of Industrial Revolution. Prior to this specific elaboration, Jerry
interacted with students on inventions during the Industrial Age and Technological Age.
He had students name inventions that they would put under the Industrial Age (e. g. steam
engine and cotton gin) and inventions that have been produced during the Technological
Age (e. g., fax machine and camera). He asked students questions about the advantages
and disadvantages of the inventions, and then he elaborated on how those inventions
afiected the cohesiveness of families, which he argued was what families enjoyed prior to
the Industrial Revolution. Then, he made a transition and brought students’ attention to

the invention of the cotton gin.

Jerry: OK. The cotton gin. I want to focus on this a little bit because there is
a strong cultural aspect here. The cotton gin was produced by a man called
Eli Whitney. Your book will tell you that. . .. He wanted to be able to use
machinery to take seeds out of the cotton very quickly. Keep it in mind now
that the south was still based on agricultural and the north was based on
industry. We’ve covered these two aspects, right? With the invention of the
cotton gin, it meant now that more land could be planted with cotton because
you can make more profit from cotton. What that means is that you’re gonna
see an increase in slavery. So, that’s why you saw that humor that was
referred to you2 that for the cotton gin as an invention was viewed by blacks
as an invention from hell because it forced them to work much longer hours
producing a product from which they were not benefited from. So, from a
cultural aspect, what was wonderful for Europeans, an invention was
wonderful for Europeans, and which profited capitalists became a
negative aspect for a group of people. So, when you are out there, you hear
about cotton and... and everything and you think of inventions of being
wonderful. To a degree, yes, it is. But, keep it in perspective that this

 

2 Earlier there was a note about the cotton gin.
Jerry: You know what blacks called it? It’s a “machine from hell.” Class: [laugh].

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invention was great for one group, but at the same time, it had a detrimental

effect on others.
In this passage, Jerry was very direct about how one event can be viewed very diflerently
from another group’s perspective. He used the example of cotton gin and broadened the
significance of it, and relate it to everything that students think might be wonderful
inventions. He reminded students to “keep it in perspective” that an invention such as
the cotton gin may be wonderful for one group; it could have a detrimental effect on other
people. The elaboration and connection he made to students are important to his
approach to multicultural history teaching. His elaboration in a way challenged
conventional thinking, hence, gave students an opportunity to be exposed to a different
idea.

Jerry then moved on to elaborate more on how inventions of machines resulted in
the factory system and unequal treatment of women and children working in the factory.
These kinds of information are considered by Jerry to be the “extra” that students in his
class will benefit from. He did not just repeat the textbook account; he believed that his
elaboration of some key points helped students see things in perspective. Throughout
this elaboration, however, there were not opportunities for students to discuss this added
information and its significance to enslaved blacks. Because students were not given
other materials and information, it was hard for them to ask more questions. And
because Jerry used a lecture method to present the new idea, students had little time to
process the information that they just received. Jerry’s many other concerns, such as the
need to cover the mainstream history and his beliefs about what students need and how

they learn (I discuss these in later sections), make the decision of pursuing a new idea

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complicated. By making the point that he wanted students to get—an invention can be
viewed difierently from difierent perspectives—Jerry managed to teach students what he
believes to be important.

Jerry was non-traditional in the sense that while using the mainstream textbook,
he brought in perspectives other than the European American perspective. Jerry is
conscious of his approach. He compared his practice with other teachers’ ways of
teaching the Industrial Revolution and found that he would “go off track” to talk about
difl‘erent perspectives while others may not. For example, when talking about the Lowell
factory system, he would address how children and women were discriminated against.
“Those are things where I give my students and I call it ‘FYI’— for your information.
You know, that’s added. Above and beyond,” Jerry observed. Jerry’s added information
and perspective are helpful especially when the textbook account provides a narrative that
appears to be “neutral.” For example, there is information about the cotton gin in the
textbook that says,

The increased demand for cotton had a tragic side, however. As the Cotton
Kingdom spread, the demand for slaves grew. Slaves planted and picked the
cotton. As slaves produced more cotton, planters earned the money to buy
more land and more slaves. (p. 342)
The information is there in the textbook about the increase of slave labor due to the
increase of productivity. What makes a difference is that Jerry’s lecture helped students
see how an European perspective differs from the enslaved blacks’ perspective. This
kind of emphasis distinguishes one teacher who is sensitive to multiculttu'al perspectives
from another who merely lays out the facts. There is an epistemological idea that Jerry is

stressing rather than just telling students the phenomenon. Making perspectives explicit

is important in multicultural education because it will clarify to students how the past is

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multi-faceted and how perspectives determine one’s understanding about an event. If
multicultural perspectives are stressed, students would likely know whose stories they are
studying and understand what it means to look at history from different players’
experiences.

However, although Jerry pointed out different perspectives, he did not engage
students in in-depth and substantive understanding about enslaved blacks’ experiences.
The “ethnic perspective” that Jerry brought in was a piece of information, fragmented and
disconnected from a coherent story about the group, without grounding in context. By
merely mentioning different perspectives, Jerry gives the impression that his version of
multicultural history is one that is additive. These “cultural aspects” are introduced in the
form of “FYI”—for your information. The form implies that the information is outside
of ordinary history. The subject does not lead to sustained substantive discussions; the
subject is chosen to be merely mentioned. Authentic voices of the enslaved blacks or the
women who worked in the Lowell mills, as a result, are not emphasized in this added
information. Hence, students do not have the opportunity to deepen their understanding
of the epistemological concept underlying different perspectives. By categorizing the
“cultural aspec ” of history as difl‘erent perspectives and applying the term to experiences
of minorities, Jerry reinforced the idea that those people’s past is not “history,” but
supplementary notes, rather than an integral part of American history.

Jerry faces a dilemma in trying to introduce multiple perspectives throughout the
course of a busy course. Some argue that for multicultural history to be authentic, some
“depth” for the subject or perspective that one studies is needed. Jerry clearly has

strength in bringing breadth to his students. But how to develop an authentic

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multicultural history with both depth and breadth is a real challenge. Klopfer (1987), a
public school teacher, tried to respond to the call for teaching a multicultural U.S. history
class to high school students. In developing her model for teaching multicultural U.S.
history, Klopfer noted the importance of providing “depth” for the individuals or subjects
that they are studying. More time was given to the unfamiliar perspective; and discussion
questions give students opportunities to think with both the dominant perspective and

multicultural perspectives.

Text asLInterprettgion

Another conception of history that Jerry has is that textbooks are not the sole
authority of knowledge. He believes it is important that students understand that they
should not accept any conclusive explanation without questioning. An example of such
practice is Jerry’s teaching about the independence of Texas.

Students were called upon to read the section subtitled “The Fight for
Independence” under “The Lone Star Republic” in the textbook. The text deals with the
history of Texas in 18208 when Stephen Austin and his settlers agreed to become
Mexican citizens, obey its laws and worship in the Catholic Church in order for them to
develop lands in Texas. But, the narrative goes on, other Americans flooding into Texas
were Protestants and resented the laws. In 1836, Texans declared their independence
from Mexico and set up the Republic of Texas. Mexico’s General Santa Anna
determined to crush the rebellious in Texas. And, while Sam Houston, the commander of
the army of the Republic of Texas, decided to fall back as Santa Anna advanced, some

200 Texans were trying to hold off Santa Anna’s army at the Alamo, an old Spanish

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mission. In a “heroic fight,” all of the “defenders” died. The story goes on and says,
“The slaughter at the Alamo both angered and inspired Texans. It brought a flood of
volunteers into Sam Houston’s army.”

After students read the text, Jerry expounded on what he considered to be
important points. I break the complete instruction of this piece into two chunks for the
purpose of discussion.

Jerry: Very good. Very good. Well read. Let’s look at some stuff there ‘cause
I want you to think you know people playing words. You’ll hear a lot of
words and sometimes you got to explore it. Now, we have just looked at the
moral concept surrounding the whole fight for quote unquote “Texas
Independence” all right? When you do this, I want you to compare what went
on with Britain and the early colonies and their fight for independence. Now,
here you’ve got a group of people who invited others in and asked you, you
can stay here, you obey my laws, my rules, my regulation and do anything.
You decided, those people who they invited... decided that they don’t want to
obey on the laws, they decided that they want to break away and...want
independence. You can’t attain independence for something that doesn’t
belong to you. Right? And, we got to look at history. Now, when you stay
here and say that the Mexicans attack the Alamo. Right? That’s one thing,
but then in the other part when it says that “the slaughter at the Alamo,”
nobody was slaughtered. It was a fight! You wanted independence. I was
attacking. I outnumbered you and you think. Go ahead.

Chris: It was like 18,000 troops. It was over a thousand of them.

Jerry made his argument. He challenged the textbook account. Then, there was some
student response. Jerry’s class involves students and Jerry values student ideas. Jerry
welcomes student opinions and believes that he does not “indoctrinate” students.
However, when Jerry takes a side and intends to prove his point, he leaves little room for
students to construct their understanding and form their opinions. In response to Chris,
Jerry continued to make his point.

Jerry: First of all, you got to be.... I don’t care there was one million on the
troops. What you folks got to understand is there is a moral concept. They

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were called upon to surrender. They were called upon to surrender. Right?
They choose to fight to the death. It is not a slaughter if you decide you will
fight to the death. Secondly, you got to look at our history book tried to
justify what was simply a wrong doing from the beginning. This was not
America’s land. Right? Texans were invited in. They decided they wanted it.
We suddenly came [and] tried to make history right for us. So, when we
called it a “slaughter,” it is not a slaughter, that’s like saying the Boston
Massacre was a massacre. Go ahead Adam.

Adam: I forgot.
Jerry: OK. when you remember.
Chris: So, it was [inaudible]

Jerry: I think what you have to be careful of is what people print. Right?
There were death; there were people killing. But, you can’t look at the
background, and the one thing we can debate about, how we interpret things.
But, the one thing you and I can debate about, we can debate about facts. The
facts are there were two sides fighting with each other. The facts you and I
both can agree is that Texas were invited by the Mexicans. Right? And, they
were asked to obey their laws and then they choose not to. What were the
Mexicans supposed to do? Just stand by and watch their laws being
[violated]? If you’re not going to obey my laws, then, you have to leave. If
you don’t have to leave, then I’m gonna have to throw you out.

Students in this discussion were not able to raise questions that were significant enough

to have a dialogue with Jerry. It was Jerry’s show. One reason for this was that Jerry was

eager to get his big idea across. He was not elaborating ideas in the textbook, but arguing

against it. He needed time to make his case and instruct. The instruction not surprisingly

looked rather teacher-centered. There was not much room for students to challenge his

authority. As an attempt to challenge the textbook’s authority, Jerry provided his

viewpoint to replace the textbook’s. But, students were not provided more information

about both interpretations to base their judgement on. What they were facing is one

authority over another. Nevertheless, Jerry’s challenge of the textbook account did seem

to offer an opporttmity for students to think about alternative views. It seems that Jerry’s

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emphasis on critiquing the textbook may be a way to encourage students to think
difierently. However, we do not know to what degree students learned about the concept.
Jerry continued to elaborate on the use of language and how it afl‘ects our
understanding about what happened. Two to three students raised questions (the
questions were inaudible from the tape) which encouraged Jerry to further explain how
what was a “battle” was interpreted as a “slaughter.” He used Boston “Massacre” as
another example to show how people can be misled by printed words. “Five people dead.
What we called it? ‘A massacre.’ Be fair! You’re not using five people dead a
massacre!” Jerry argued to his class. He then emphasized the importance of questioning
printed words.
Don’t just let people print things and don’t analyze it. I mean whatever you
choose to decide, that’s OK. It’s not gonna change the outcome. Texas is
still American land. It ain’t go back to them no matter what you and I say.
When we can examine things, it’s OK. All right. And, this part says [in] l 8
minutes, 630 Mexicans were killed, right? You see, I’ll query that. I would
query the 18 minutes and the vast amount of people that were killed. I would
like to analyze that.
Jerry was paying attention to students’ attitude toward that which is printed, hence,
accounts of what happened. He seemed to say that he cared less about what students
eventually believed than what their attitudes might be toward someone’s account. He
gave an example of the kind of things that he would question in the text (in 18 minutes,
630 Mexicans were killed.) His goal was to point out to students that because
questionable things like that are embedded in texts and might be taken as authoritative
knowledge, they should bring the same critical reading like that to their texts themselves.

In questioning the text’s representation of the battle at the Alamo, Jerry pointed

out an important concept—text should not be believed to be the Truth. He also argued

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that the government tends to justify things done irnmorally. While using the textbook as
the basis for students’ historical knowledge, Jerry thus did not follow everything that was
said. He challenged students to think about the reliability of narratives and to some
extent demonstrated his way of questioning what people wrote—that is, using what he
called the “human logic” and questioning the use of language in accounts of what
happened. By picking out the word “slaughter” as a point to question the legitimacy of
the fight for independence, Jerry indirectly suggested how a different perspective would
change the story about the Alamo. “What were the Mexicans supposed to do?” Jerry
asked the question in the middle of his lecture to students suggesting a different view.

The teaching of history is mostly controversial and challenging when the teacher
challenges the interpretation of an established account. Jerry’s ability to ask questions is
crucial in his teaching. Banks (1994) pointed out that it is important that teachers know
how to ask questions about the American experience because we do not know all the
answers to what happened in the past. Jerry may not know the history of the other side,
however, he is able to use what he called the “human logic” to question established
accounts. This is Jerry’s strength, a kind of intellectual disposition that allows him to
speculate and leave room for interpretation. His “human logic” is also rooted in his
philosophy about humanity, an understanding about how humans react to situations. He
said, “I think what connects us is our sense of humanity.” His belief that humans share
the same human nature allows him to think that people on the other side are not
necessarily evil, as the textbook often portrays them.

Without bringing in additional materials, Jerry was able to critique the textbook

account and bring in a different viewpoint. This is one of Jerry’s real strengths and what

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he meant when he said that multicultural history will always be there in his instruction.
By using the textbook as the foundational knowledge, including its chronology, topics
and contents, Jerry brought in alternative perspectives as he went along with the
textbook. However, by relying on the text, Jerry’s multicultural teaching followed the
political and military history that the mainstream textbook provides. And, because the
textbook was the major source of students’ historical knowledge and there was not a
grounded discussion about Texas “Independence” from alternative perspectives, students
were likely to stick to the mainstream narrative.

Jerry’s teaching is conceptual—e.g., printed words should be queried. He has
hinted at the interpretive (and political) nature of history to students. However, his
authoritative representation contrasts in ways with the important concept of historical
interpretation. Students might replace the textbook account with his, hence, missing the
chance to reflect on the epistemological issues of historical interpretation. The challenge
Jerry faces in enacting this highly conceptual teaching is engaging students. How can
teachers encourage students to understand the interpretive nature of history? How can
teachers engage students in conceptual understanding about the multicultural past of the
U.S.? From Jerry’s experience as well as Whitney’s and Lance’s, it seems that teachers
need to ground concepts in substantive materials and develop analytical understanding
based on the information and evidence they have.

Takaki (1993) called Mexicans in Texas and California (later as America annexed
both Texas and California after the Mexican War) as “strangers in their native land,”—
native Mexicans whose identity was forced to change because of the annexation of their

land to America. In a interview, Jerry said that in teaching U.S. history, “you need to find

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out about other people, other ethnicities around that period, so that student, that
individual could understand that from ethnic point of view.” Yet this vision is difficult to
enact in practice. Jerry did a wonderful job challenging the textbook account.
Nevertheless, being short of different accounts and materials about “other ethnicities
around that period,” Jerry could not help students understand stories of the other side.
The conceptual understanding that he hopes to help students understand could not be
grounded in the detailed substance of history. Jerry critically highlighted the language
and perspective used by the textbook account. Yet the fact that he goes along with the
chronology and topics of the textbook and relies on the textbook as the main source of

knowledge leaves the structure of master narrative in the textbook unchallenged.

Past-Present Connection

As the U.S. society becomes increasingly diverse and issues of diversity become
more accepted topics, people begin to make sense of the connection between the past and
present in different ways. Non-elite Americans are able to find connections of the past to
the present when more studies are done to find personal meanings in history. Between
1958 and 1978, the proportion of doctoral dissertations written on subjects in social
history quadrupled, overtaking political history as the principal area of graduate research
(Appleby et al., 1994). Social historians find the past of their ancestors, not in
government documents, but in private account books; they find stories to tell about
people in shop floors, slave quarters, drawing rooms, rice fields, sod houses, and tent
revivals, places that are mostly neglected in traditional historiography. Younger

historians in the late 1960s turned their attention to the records of the less powerful and

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articulate people in past societies—workers, women, racial and ethnic minorities (e.g.,
Foner, 1990). New kinds of sources beyond records and documents of political elite, _
constitutions, and treaties were explored; new narrative representations were attempted.
The impact of social history on the discipline means redefining American history in a
more multicultural way. For one thing, people’s conception about history is broadened—
it becomes more multicultural as people begin to view the past from the perspectives of
the traditionally silenced, hence, they make sense of the past and present in a more
holistic way’. One example of Jerry’s making connections of the past with the present is
his teaching on the topic of Immigration.

At the end of the Industrialization Age unit and when the class had already gone
into the Age of Jackson, Jerry decided to add some information. On this day, Jerry began
the class by complimenting students for their good work in turning in their papers. He
further encouraged them to do a good job in every subject. Then, he began the lesson,
“O.K., what I want to do, I want to digress a bit... We’re gonna be getting on to the
J acksonian Era, but I want to look back at the Industrial Age... and discuss some aspect
of immigration.” He wanted to discuss immigration in the past as it connects with the
Industrial Age and the present. In preparation, he had gone to the library and found a
Time Magazine (Fall, 1993) special issue on the racial make-up of the American
population. He made a copy of some articles from the special issue, distributed those
separate articles to different students. Only a handful of students had an article. Before
he had students read the articles, he tried to make the connection of immigration with the
Industrial Revolution.

Jerry writes on the chalkboard:

 

3 History in the U.S. was European, male, and political until well into the 19605 (Novick, 1989).

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Immigration + Industrial Rev

Jerry: What do you see the connection between the Industrial Revolution as
we talked about it you know back to the early 18003 and immigration?
Leisa: Maybe new people would bring new ideas?

Jerry: O.K., all right

(writes on the board) New People-New ideas

O.K., new ideas. So, the one thing you see with Industrial Revolution is that it
causes more people to migrate. It increases immigration. Right? Is that fair
to say?

Leisa: Yeah, or,

Jerry: OK. I agree with what you said. BJ?

BJ : Individuals come in working in the factory.

Jerry: O.K. Let me see. They come over. Would you say that they the factory
system lures, attracts more people?

BJ: Yes, there’s more jobs and a lot of people do not have jobs.

Jerry: O.K. (Keeps saying OK. as the boy explains)

Jerry puts down on chalkboard:

New People-New ideas-increase in jobs

Jerry: O.K. wonderful. Trying to connect immigration with industrialization.
Lamar?

Lamar: [inaudible]

Jerry: OK. So, all right, so along with the new people and new ideas, right?
Saline: Culture.

Jerry: O.K., hold on with your culture. Along with the new people and new
ideas, right? These people are coming in, so you see you don’t see it as an
advantage at this point?

Lamar: It’s a disadvantage.

Jerry: So, you see it as a disadvantage. Very good. That’s the word I want.
(writes down)

1. New People-New ideas-increase in jobs

2. Disadvantage

Jerry: And, what is the disadvantage that we see in this? In terms that which
is coming in which we will call “foreign” versus that which is here which we
will call what was the word we learned last week?

Mary: Nativist?

Jerry: Nativist. Very good.

1. New People-New ideas-increase in jobs

2. Disadvantage—foreign vs. nativist

Jerry: What is a nativist? Mary, can you tell us again?

Mary: They didn’t like any foreigners.

Jerry: Right, they didn’t like anything. Remember what is the other word, we
say that if you are scared of things foreign, you tend to be what?

BJ: Oh, oh, (try to say the word), some phobia.

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Jerry: Tell me. (Several students have tried)

Joseph: Xenophobia.

Jerry: Thank you. Xenophobia. Fear of anything foreign. Class, this is what
Lamar is kind of attributing to. When you talk about the disadvantages...
remember now we’re talking about those early ages, right? The factory
system has just grown up. . .. Remember on the worksheet we said that there
are a lot of political upheaval in Eastern Europe at the time, so you had a lot of
migrants coming over to escape that political upheaval. Right? And, they are
coming of in terms of the Germans, the Poles, the Swedes. They are coming
from Eastern Europe. They also coming, as you will see, they are from Afiica
and they are not coming as immigrants, right? They are also coming from
Asia, right? And, other places. What we have then is still most of the people
we have United States, Native Americans are already there, so we are not
excluding them, we know women are already there. Right? But, now you
have a fear of that which is foreign and a love of that which is native. Right?

In this passage, Jerry helped students conceptualize a link between immigration and
Industrial Revolution, a connection between what they had learned about nativism. He
asked students to make the connection themselves and guided them to see that there were
both advantages (increased jobs and new people) and disadvantages (nativism) related to
the Industrial Revolution and immigration. Further, he made the connection to help
students recognize different kinds of immigrants and Native Americans who are already
here and Afiicans who are forced to be here.

After this opening discussion, feeling that he had made the bridge between the
Industrial Revolution, he then moved on to discuss the articles he picked from the issue
of Time. He showed students the cover of the Time Special Issue (Fall, 1993). It is a
woman’s face.

Jerry: This picture is entitled “A Face of America.” Right?

BJ and Nick speaking at the same time: America doesn’t have a face.

Jerry: Wonderful. This is a face of America. This is what you are gonna see
in the next two years because you’re right Nick, you said, America does not

have a face, you’re right. But, in saying that this represented this a face of
America, this was created from a computer from a mixture of several races. A

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computer image. So, you’re right when you said America does not have a
face. You’re absolutely right... We are moving toward the whole mixture
that we are becoming so integrated due to immigration and all the other things
we have that when you said America does not have a face, Nick you’re
absolutely right, ‘cause America does not have a face which is White, Black,
Yellow, Blue, or Brown. You know they are all faces of America which are
intertwined in so many people. So, you’re right. Very observant...
Jerry was very pleased that Nick and BI. understood that America is a country with a
diverse population. It does not have a standard face—race, ethnicity, culture or language.
He made comments to reinforce the idea that America does not have a standard face
characterizes by one ethnic group. Following the lecture about the cover page, Jerry
selectively discussed pieces that he wanted to highlight. He selected racial demography
and statistics about the per capita income of the native born and the foreign born. The
statistics were read through, but the significance of the statistics was not discussed.
Another article that he discussed focused on Lowell today. Students had learned about
the Lowell system in their Industrialization unit.
Jerry: O.K. Sh, sh. Who’s got that piece called “Lowell’s Little Acre?”
Mary: Me.

(Students take turns to finish reading the article. Since there is only one copy,
the article has to be passed around.)

Jerry: Good. That’s enough. What do we know about Lowell? Why do you

think we read about Lowell?

Students: (many say at the same time). Factory.

Jerry: Exactly.
Jerry went on to conclude that “Lowell could represent the changing face of America”
where “just all ethnic groups find their way there.” Before the class was dismissed, Jerry
brought back the point Nick mentioned earlier, that America does not have a face because

“our population is becoming so diversified.”

In this lesson, Jerry is again adding extra information for students to process. He

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makes the point about the changing face of America and how Lowell, a place where mills
employed European (Irish, followed by Greeks, Poles, Scots, Portuguese, French
Canadians and Italian) workers, became in the 1990s a place for Hispanic, Vietnamese
and Cambodian immigrants. Lowell signifies the connection between the immigration
past and present.

Using this added information, Jerry made the link between the past and present.
He showed students a piece of information that is outside of the textbook. This gave
students an opportunity to see a different view on immigration. It helped put immigration
in a historical perspective. Jerry said that his decision to bring in this article was
impromptu. In this lesson, he helped link some things that students had learned—
Industrial Revolution, Lowell mills, immigrants, nativism, and xenophobia. He then
pointed out diversity as a way to connect these ideas to describe the American society.

Jerry’s purpose in this lesson was to give students some general ideas about
imrrrigration and relevant concepts. He did not intend to have detailed discussions about
some issues involved in immigration, such as the foreign vs. native issues. He did not
intend to give detailed accounts about different immigrant groups or origins of
xenophobia (Curran, 1975; Parmet, 1981). Jerry mentioned different immigrant groups
in the review. The time frame of the immigration he was referring to was not clear. Jerry
seemed to be talking about irnnrigration across time in general. His goal was not to
discuss the history of immigration or xenophobia, but to teach general concepts of
imrrrigration and diversity.

The connection between the past and present is the phenomenon of continued

diversity and the fact that the U.S. is not a monocultural society. Because time was

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devoted to read the articles in class and lecturing, little time was spent on students
processing the information. The materials that Jerry brought in were used in the same
way as a textbook. Students took turns to read the text and then Jerry elaborated and
guided the reading of the text. There was not in-depth discussion about why those
immigrants were resented and how xenophobia developed. It was just mentioned as a
bad thing and students seemed to have no questions about it. No questions were raised
about whether there are still nativism and xenophobia in today’s society and what
problems today’s immigrants face.

It seems that a challenge to multicultural history teaching is how to engage
students in a more substantive understanding about a concept. Trying to help students
understand a general pattern is difficult. Jerry tried to connect concepts and contents for
students, but depth seemed to be difficult to teach. Lance also believes that it is more
important to give students the “big picture” than details of specific content or concept.
They both seem to choose between general concepts and detailed substance. Is it a
dichotomy? How much detail a teacher can go in without losing the thread is a big
question in teaching history. In order to go beyond an additive approach to multicultural
history, a teacher has to change the structure of the curriculum in such a way that
multicultural history is not just mentioned and covered. Some depth is required so that
concepts can be grounded in some context. But to do such kind of work is not without
challenge. Jerry shows how even with his knowledge in history and inclusive conception

of history, it is hard to teach multicultural history in-depth.

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Inclusion as Human Commonality

There is yet another concept of multicultural history that Jerry holds which is his
belief in the idea of inclusion. Jerry believes that the curriculum should be more
inclusive. He argues that textbooks should include all ethnic groups from the beginning.
He also argues that inclusions should not be just about the negative aspect of minority
groups. It should not be one that is predominantly European American history. His
diverse students should have the right to know that “at some point in history they too
came here.” In practice, Jerry’s concern for a more inclusive representation of the past
becomes one that touches upon human commonality and universal human rights issue,
something close to Lance’s vision. Consistent with his previous approaches, while
focusing on universal commonality and patterns of phenomena across cultures, Jerry’ s
instruction still aims at teaching the general concepts rather than in-depth understanding
of individual stories.

Inclusion as global human relations. “I’m big on the capitals of countries,” said
Jerry as he went off track from teaching the Industrial Age to probe students’ knowledge
about capitals of South American countries and then other areas of the world. “Before
you leave my class, you’re going to know every capital of every country in the world,”
said Jerry. Jerry believed that some of the most teachable moments occur spontaneously.
He was glad that students had the opportunity to be reinforced with the idea of the global
community. It was not his goal that students became experts in ethnic studies. His main
goal is that students learn to get along with people. “It’s immoral to know nothing about
Haitians who go to school with you... I don’t think you have to be an expert... I got to

know Taiwan’s capital is Taipei,” Jerry said. It is important to Jerry that students learn

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9

about the “attitude” to “accommodate” people “displaying a genuine interest in leaming’
about others so that other people will accommodate them as well. And, a good start is to
know about the capitals of the world. The ability to talk to people other than their own
groups is stressed every now and then in his class. After the activity on naming capitals,
Jerry shared his experience with students’ parents who are KKK members when he
taught in North Carolina. He told the students that these parents treated him nicely.
“You can still talk to people who have difi‘erent ideas from you,” said Jerry.

Prior to becoming a high school teacher, Jerry had served for nine years in the
U.S. armed forces and had been sent overseas to Honduras, Guatemala, San Jose, Costa
Rica, etc. “I worked with indigenous people. And, I got a tremendous amount of
satisfaction from knowing that what I did benefited somebody directly,” said Jerry.
Traveling experiences influenced him; he enjoyed connecting with people in different
parts of the world. And, he perceives himself a “citizen of the world.” “I tell folks that I
see myself one [sic] as a universal citizen. That means I have no quote unquote
‘nationality.’ I see myself as a spiritual being,” said Jerry. Jerry is a Muslim and
believes that “our morality touches upon our spirituality.” “1 think spirituality gives you
a sense of connection, sense of oneness with the universe.”

At the bottom of Jerry’s belief about multicultural teaching is the humanistic
belief about universal human commonality. At times, it is manifested in his global
human relations approach when what he wanted to do is to cultivate in students
dispositions toward different peoples and cultures. The good society would be created if
the people learn to get along with each other and are genuinely interested in learning

about each other. Jerry said that he cares less about teaching students research methods

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and writing essays than teaching students how to “accommodate” people. “I mean I
don’t measure them by so much of their ability to pass a test. I measure them by their
ability to get along because in the long run, it’s what’s important,” said Jerry believing
that no man lives in isolation and students’ ability to deal with people different from them
are crucial to a better life.

In practice, this goal that students would get along with people is implemented
mostly during the “teachable moments” when Jerry talked with students about his
worldview and philosophy about life. His formal curriculum focuses on teaching
students the academic subject matter, which is seen as treated differently from this other
content.

Inclusion as non-ethnocentric cross-cultural comparison. Connected with the
human relations approach is Jerry’s non-ethnocentric cross-cultural comparison approach
which is also based on the theme of human commonality. “I think what connects us is
our sense of humanity,” said Jerry. He believes that ethnic studies should not be taught in
isolation. This philosophy is also revealed in his teaching of the Afro-American History
course, the first time in Oakland High School, as a mandate from the district. In that
course, he used a textbook written by Asante, the leading Afro-centric scholar in the U.S.
J erry reveres Asante as a scholar and likes the textbook, but he would prefer a more
comparative approach, one that is not so ethnocentric. His non-ethnocentric orientation is
demonstrated in his preference to address the “cultural aspect” of history cross-
culturally—what he called the “comparative approach.”

Jerry perceives himself differently from other teachers. He is proud of being

different from most teachers who would, in his judgement, just state the facts and move

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on. In contrast, he would spend time making comparisons of one event to another.
For instance, if you teach them the Trail of Tears. The march of the
Cherokees from Georgia to Oklahoma. I think it was just stated as facts [by
other teachers]. Well, the Cherokees were removed because their land was
wanted, conclusion. And, then you move on. With me, when I am doing
that, I try for my students to understand the plight of these people. The
Southern upheaval. You know here you got to just leave your homes and
everything. And, you’re gone. And, in doing that, I try to connect it with like
the Jews. I try to connect it with Asians coming to California during the Gold
Rush. You know and how they were traumatized by a culture that didn’t
wholly embrace them. I try to connect it with Blacks in the middle passage...
I’ll try to connect it to the Russian peasants, the surfs, you know when the
nobles wanted their land. So, it’s not so much do I base you know the cultural
study and historical fact, but the similarities within those groups. And, what
I want them to understand is that. . .like Nazi Germany. Brutality is endemic
wherever people don’t speak up. So, I think that’s a difference that I see with
my teaching style.

Note that Jerry believes that he tried to help students understand the plight of the
oppressed. He also raises the level of concern for injustices by comparing events cross-
culturally to reveal the similarities of inhumanity that occurred in human history. I
observed how he taught the Trail of Tears. Even though he did not make the comparison
exactly the way he described in this interview, the idea of comparing one group’s
experience to another was conveyed.

The Trail of Tears was taught within the larger chapter that discussed Andrew
Jackson’s presidency. Before this lesson, Jerry was away from the class for a conference
for a week, then the students had sex education for a week. This means that they had not
met for two weeks prior to today’s meeting. Because of the lengthy absence of meeting,
he had asked students to do a summary for the chapter of Jackson. So, today he went
over with students some important aspects of the J acksonian era. He talked about
Jackson the person and the electoral vote. Thirty-five minutes into the lesson, Jerry said,

Jerry: Now I want to talk about the oppression of minorities. . .Andrew

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Jackson gave the legal order to the federal troops to force the Native
Americans in the dead of winter fi'om Georgia to Oklahoma. And, we’re
talking about 2,700 miles at least. These people had to march in literally in
the dead of winter.

Mary: [inaudible]

Jerry: Very good, dead of winter. Snow. March to the mountains. Few
horses. Mary was right it was called the Trail of Tears.

Chris: [inaudible]

Jerry: Oh, be nice to find out. I’m not sure how many left, but that will be
good information to find out... Keep this in mind. You got a lot of young
women, a lot of babies, a lot of old people. . .. What I want to point out to
you folks is that this is not the first time quote unquote that a federal
government has acted in this way. I was recently talking to my American
Government students class this morning. And, Star, do you remember what
we talked about to the Japanese?

Star: [inaudible]

Jerry: O.K. Korematsu vs. United States. When you took Government, you
would find that during 1940’s, right?

Chris: They set up a Japanese kids are like prison camps, like that didn’t
get. . .Gerrnany. Those kind of camp.

Jerry: Very good. Very astute, Chris. Mitch?
Mitch: If they [inaudible]

Jerry: Very good. One thing that happened which really ...[inaudible] on the
nation’s bound was that after the Japanese have bombed Peal Harbor... Those
people with Japanese ancestry within the United States, Continental United
States, were rounded up (loudly), literally rounded up, right? and sent to these
quote unquote for want of better word “prison camp” or concentration centers.

B.J.: But, [inaudible]. . .Japanese market. . .?

Jerry: Very good. What happened, folks, is that simply because we were at
war with Japan and we feared, remember I told you about xenophobia, fearing
of anything foreign. Well, we fear Americans on the whole fear that
everybody who looked Japanese regardless of the point that you were born in
the United States and the U.S. citizens, you had a loyalty to Japan. 80,. . .you
would end up sabotaging the United States. So, the supreme court in

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Korematsu vs. the U. S. ruled that it was OK. ‘cause this individual called
Korematsu sued. But, the supreme court ruled that there comes a time, right,
this conditions within the country that certain ethnic groups will have their
legal right suspending. It was a wrong decision that was made. They knew
what it was made, but the country was in a war. To undo that damage,
subsequently years later, the senate ruled that these people who were interned
and stayed alive should be compensated to so many dollars. I want to believe
it was 20,000 dollars per man. So, those people who survived got some
money for it. It’s not enough to pay for them, for it’s just an admission that
what was done was wrong. O.K. Chris?

Chris asked a question about whether or not the government can “round up” Haitians if

the U.S. is at war with Haiti. Another student asked if the fact that the U.S. can round up

Japanese in the U.S. shows the power of the U.S.

Jerry is not a relativist. Here and in other places he took a moral stance and
taught students what he believed to be the right thing. By making the comparison, Jerry
was able to point out succinctly that wrong things were done by the federal government
to certain groups of people. At the same time, to make the case meant that discussion of
the “plight” of the Native Americans was limited to generalizations without much
discussion of the actual experiences of the Chrerokees. Students did not ask about what
the Cherokees’ views and experiences were in the so called Trail of Tears. No questions
were raised about the Cherokees—e.g., what they did in response to Jackson’s removal
policy and how they felt—after Jerry made his point about the similarity between
experiences of the Cherokees and Japanese Americans in World War H. Here, as in other
additive approaches to multicultural history, minorities are treated as victims, their
plights are reported (e.g., the Trail of Tears and Japanese Intemment), and that is all that

students learn. Students are not encouraged to learn about those people’s experiences in

multiple ways. The tendency is that they do not ask questions from the side of the

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victims, but from the side of the winners. Recall that Jerry’s students asked, “Can the
U.S. round up Haitians?” “Is it the reason why America is such a powerful country?”
Jerry used the Trail of Tears to symbolize injustice that is prevalent in human
society. Pointing out similarities among different events broadens students’ views about
human history; it also helps students analyze events in a comparative way using the
“moral standards,” as Jerry put it. Jerry’s ability to give an overview pattern of events is
valuable. It can broaden students’ understanding about human commonality. Yet a
difficult tradeoff in a global comparative approach is that differences that are unique to
each different event and the significance to each group often are ignored. The Middle
Passage cannot be the same experience as the Trail of Tears, nor the Japanese Intemment

the same thing as the Holocaust.

_Ch_allenges to Multicultural History Teaching

Jerry’s teaching multicultural history makes crucial contributions. His
understanding about the multicultural nature of history allows him to raise issues with
students about different people’s experiences, e.g., the cotton gin’s impact on blacks. His
attitude toward critiquing the textbook’s representation of knowledge enables him to
remind students that although he is using a standard textbook, students should exercise
their judgment on the reliability of the interpretation of the past. His awareness of the
different ethnic perspectives and experiences sensitizes him to compare events across
cultures to emphasize injustices that are done by one group to the other(s). Because of
his sensitivity to perspectives and minorities’ experiences, in Jerry’s class, there is more

opportunity to reflect upon the “Euro-centric” textbook. Jerry is not afiaid of introducing

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the term. He tells students directly that their textbook is Euro-centric. In contrast,
Lance’s teaching, although in some ways looking alike, does not provide students as
many opportunities to reflect upon the race- and gender- biased cuniculum. Jerry’s
critique of the textbook offers an epistemological challenge to students’ conception about
historical interpretation as truth.

Perhaps what is most salient about Jerry’s teaching is his ability to ask questions
that are challenging. Jerry does not have sufficient multicultural subject matter
knowledge for all the content he teaches, as he has acknowledged it, however, he could
ask questions of the textbook based on his understanding about human nature and his
moral commitment. His critique about Texas Independence is an example of that. How
Jerry’s habit of mind and values are acquired are unknown, yet Jerry seems to tell us that
it is possible to raise critical questions without knowing details about the substance of a
topic. What Jerry knows is something about human commonality and some
understanding about the nature of knowledge. He reasoned that the Chinese could not be
all coolies and that Mexicans had their legitimate cause to fight to keep their land.
Hence, there must be other stories; the textbook is one-sided.

Still, syntactical and substantive knowledge is important to teach history more in-
depth. Throughout Jerry’s implementation of his various imbedded beliefs about
multicultural history, one general difficulty emerges—his teaching lacks depth, details, or
authentic representation of the different perspectives that he tried to expose students to.
By employing “FYI” as the method to provide information about different perspectives,
Jerry missed the opportunity to teach multicultural history in a more authentic way.

Students do not necessarily know more about the voice or details of the other side——the

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disadvantaged groups’ views and actions taken related to the historical events. Native
Americans only appear when discussing Trail of Tears and Jackson’s Indian policy;
Japanese Americans only were mentioned in World War H or when comparing with other
human injustices. An obvious challenge for teachers is to integrate the curriculum in
ways that allow those people’s voices to be present across time.

This is a very difficult task. Even when students have much more understanding
about an event like the Civil War and slavery, it does not necessarily lead them to analyze
present events of discrimination, because slavery and discrimination were considered to
be “in the past” (Wills, 1996). The fi'agmented presence of minorities and a one-sided
presentation of their experiences limit students’ understanding about the multicultural
past of a society. Wills and Mehan’s (1996) research report on multicultural history
teaching in middle schools called for a history that recognizes diversity “within a
common historical narrative” where women and people of color could “authentically
speak as active participan ” in historical events. The authors suggested using “civil
ri ts” as the central theme to create a narrative that includes every group. It appears that
although Jerry’s openness to critiquing perspectives of the textbook is encouraging, he is
constrained by the contents of the Euro-centric representation of the military and political
history of America. The multicultural history in his classroom is, thus, additive rather
than integrative.

How is it that Jerry with such a sophisticated vision of history, ends up teaching in
ways that still privilege the master narrative structure? Are there explanations for his
additive approach to multiculturalism? Teachers often add units or materials or even

concepts to their curriculum without changing the structures and viewpoint of their

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history (Banks, 1994). Some reasons seem to stand out in Jerry’s case as important
reasons for such an approach. One involves institutional constraints—the testing system
and the textbook. His goal to help students succeed in the mainstream society is also
important in his approaches to teaching history. I will discuss this point within the

institutional constraints. Another influence is his belief about teaching and learning.

Institutional Constraints
Jerry’s dilemma to teach multicultural history in an environment that still
promotes mainstream knowledge is revealed in his opening of a lesson when he tried to
review what they had covered from the beginning of U.S. history:

Let’s back track a little bit. I’m just gonna throw things and do some
connection that makes sense. . .. Some people coming across Siberian Pass.
Right? Native Americans, different groups. They got their ways of life. The
Europeans, you got Marco Polo, you got crusades, you got colonialism
thinking this rs new world. You got destruction of Mayas and Aztec. You got
good old England sending across pilgrims. Mayflower landing on the Eastern
seaboard. All right? Religious intolerance, Crucible... Move on into the
time, independence, revolution, Thomas Paine, crisis, become states,
Washington, president, five members of his government, articles of
Confederation, Constitution, right? I’m trying to recap some of the things we
have covered. And, things that you are going to hear again, right? Because
these are the things that when you go out there you are gonna prove to
people from a factual point that you understand quote unquote “United
States History.” They are not gonna ask you anything about cultural studies,
not that we interpret it. You are in a position where you have to give it a
balance between what they are gonna ask and what they are not gonna
tell you, which is why we have to do it.

This lecture indicates the circumstance Jerry is in, one that is shared by all teachers. This
statement raises the question for us of how teachers choose to construct a practice in an
era of standards; and how they choose between teaching the mandated cuniculum or

things they believe to be important but not salient in that standard curriculum. How do

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teachers cope with this conflict? Jerry said, “I can’t focus on all these sub-topics that I
think students need to know.” “To a degree, I can only digress to certain limits. . .. And,
my limitations, of course, one is the curriculum. That has to be paramount.” In his
judgement, he is not doing students a service by emphasizing ethnic histories or
alternative perspectives on events. Knowing the high school history from “Columbus
and the pilgrims and the Navigation Act” is paramount because “this is the ACT, the SAT,
the HSPT, this is your graduate process, your GRE, your whatever.” He hopes to get his
inner-city students to college, get high grades in SAT, ACT, and HSPT4 so that they
would have a successful life.

In various times during class, Jerry hinted to students that college is their next
step. “Once you get into college, you’re gonna miss a lot of sleep,” Jerry joked with
students about him going to bed late for watching a PBS documentary. He was once very
pleased when all students handed in their assignments in time and he took the chance to
encourage them to develop a disciplined attitude toward their school work. “It would be
easy for you to succeed,” Jerry tried to make the connection to students about the
importance of their attitude toward schools and their future. He called them “future
lawyers and doctors” as a way to imply their future direction. His concern for students’
welfare is explicitly articulated in my interviews with him about the amount of
multicultural history that he could teach.

In all fairness to your students, you know, until [multiculturalism] is

universally accepted, in other words, until I could open a test and I would see
there are sixty questions and twenty of them would be about Afro-Americans,
twenty would be about Asians, twenty would be about Native Americans. In

other words, until it becomes equal, you’re doing your kids a disservice
by making them feel good, by telling them about the past while making

 

' High School Proficiency Test, a state exam that will begin testing high school students on social studies in
1999.

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their present terrible.
Once students get into college, they can be “challenged,” “voice an outcry,” and “write
about the aspect of multiculturalism within the American experience.” Given the fact
that the current U.S. textbooks and exams are still Euro-centric and the fact that he has
limited time, as a high school social studies teacher, Jerry judged that he has to cover the
basics that are expected in those contexts.

Despite the institutional constraints, Jerry still believes that there is important
knowledge that students need to know as human beings and citizens of the world. He
tried to give students something “extra” to enrich their knowledge. “I cover the facts that
are relevant to the state’s curriculum. Right? So, the kids are not cheated. As a matter of
fact, they gain much more because. . .I branch off giving them collateral materials that
could enhance their voyage (of 1eaming),” said Jerry. The “extras” that Jerry provided in
fact are there in most textbooks—most textbooks mention Trail of Tears and the tragic
side of the invention of the cotton gin. Jerry accentuates some key points. But, the result
of his multicultural history teaching is still inevitably additive when the textbooks are not
rewritten and when standardized examinations do not reflect the multicultural history of
the U.S.

Jerry’s primary goal that he has to help students learn about the mainstream
knowledge that is necessary to succeed in standardized tests and then in society forces
him to try to find a balance between what he believes to be important and what is most
beneficial to students’ success in the world. It is a difficult, thoughtful decision and one
that deserves more research. That is, we need to know to what extent standardized tests

influence teachers’ multicultural teaching. Jerry’s experience points out a structural issue

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that is embedded in all multicultural teaching.

Beliefs about Teaching and Learning
In addition to institutional constraints, Jerry’s beliefs about teaching and learning
also play significant roles in his approaches to teaching history. When critiquing
textbook accounts, Jerry takes a teacher-directed approach rather than a more inquiry
approach in which students take more active roles in constructing their understanding.

This orientation has a lot to do with how Jerry believes what teaching and learning are.

Beliefs about the Teacher’s Role

There are two major roles that Jerry plays as a teacher. One is the teacher as a
father and motivator. The other is the teacher as the guide. As a father and motivator,
Jerry talks to students in the “teachable moments” that it is important to stay in schools,
to not get pregnant, and to go to college. He tells them that it is important for them to be
disciplined and work hard on not just one subject but all subjects. He ensures them that
“nobody is born smart” and that what matters is effort. Jerry described himself as a
humanist who believes in the potential of every individual. His fatherly role makes it his
responsibility to prepare students for the reality of the world. A lot of Jerry’s students are
non-white or poor white students whose firture may well depend upon whether they do
well in school. Jerry would set aside time in class to motivate students to do well in
school. As a teacher, he is there in front of the whole group of students, giving pep talks
and preaching to them about what they should do in their young lives and how it is

possible to go to college.

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Another role that Jerry assumes is the role as an academic guide. Jerry’s
description of his fi'ustration in taking a college course demonstrates his expectation that
students need guidance. He said that his teacher wanted them to design their own
curriculum, and that he was so upset that he filed a formal protest to the professor. He
said that he is not a Ph.D. and he “expected to be guided.” Jerry described his role as a
“spider” who “dispenses knowledge.” He is at the center taking in students to, not eat
them, but feed them with knowledge. He gives students the “added knowledge” that he
knows outside of the textbook knowledge. “I am seeing myself here dispensing
information. . .. At the same time, I can grab a student based on what I see and pull them
into the web and infuse them,” said Jerry. The spider web is a web of information. Jerry
can infuse his students with knowledge of all sorts, including things that he mentioned in
his teachable moments. His analogy invokes an image of knowledge transmission. His
attitude to take students in and feed them also invokes an image of an elder or mentor
who tries to pass on to students what he knows and has experienced in this world.

The way Jerry helps students sometimes is through direct telling, e.g., telling
students that effort is more important than one’s I.Q. Sometimes, he helps students
obtain knowledge through demonstrating to students the logic of questioning the text,
which he believes to be helping students analyze. This notion is similar to Lance’s. Both
Lance and Jerry hope that students will somehow learn from their modeling how to
analyze. Like Lance, Jerry’s understanding about teaching does not involve active
student participation, although he believes that he does not “guide students to an
outcome.” “I respect my students’ right to disagree with me,” he said. Lance believes

that although he lectures, it does not mean that students will take in whatever he says

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without their own opinions. In the same vein, Jerry believes that students make decisions
themselves. There is faith that students will develop critical thinking skills through their
lecture-analysis instruction.

In secondary classrooms, teachers generally conduct teacher-centered whole-
group instruction (Cuban, 1993). More student-centered approaches such as encouraging
student opinions and having small groups generate noise and lesson teacher authority. To
Lance and Jerry, student-centered approaches may mean that they have less control over
what students learn, which would be their concerns because they want to make sure that
students get the important knowledge. Like Lance, Jerry’s method to help students
connect different ideas is through the traditional mimetic approach that dominate the
thinking of many teachers (Jackson, 1986). His assumption about learning corresponds
to his belief about teaching. Jerry’s case, rather like Lance’s, reminds us of the challenge
for teachers who have a clear sense of particular content. The two teachers have visions
of learning that require them to be at the center. Without their being at the center, they
believe that students will not get to the “analysis stage” in Lance’s words, or see the
connection between events in Jerry’s case. How do they reconcile a belief in what they
want students to learn with the calls for using student-centered learning in multicultural

history teaching?

Assumptions about Students
Reflected in his beliefs about the role as a teacher are Jerry’s assumptions about
students. His assumption about students’ ability to construct knowledge and the

assumption that students are individuals whose ethnicity should not play roles in teaching

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are important reasons why Jerry’s teaching is lecture-based and not varied to respond to
student diversity.
Jerry does not believe that high school students are ready to construct knowledge.

“I think they are looking to reproducing information, whereby historians are trying to
change an accepted outcome,” Jerry said. “Because you read ten books, written by
historians, they got similarities, but I guarantee you, it got different conclusions. You
look at papers, students’ work, all they are doing is answering the question over at
different rate,” he continued. To him the difference is the question of “old vs. young,”
and “questing knowledge vs. reprocessing information.” Jerry argued that when one is
older, one tends to “seek solutions than you rehearse problems.” “I think when you are
young, you’re just rehearsing the problems,” he said. Asked what sort of ideas his
students got when he led students to analyze the textbook account, Jerry answered,

I call them “structured ideas” because you see one thing they’ve got—they’ve

got me as a springboard. I’m there as a guide. You see. .. they are like little

sheep. To a degree wherever I lead them, they are gonna follow. They don’t

dare [to] become independent because there is a fear that the wolf is out there

and if it becomes separated from the flock, they are gonna be devoured.
Jerry’s assumption about students is similar to Lance’s, which is that students cannot do
analysis without him. Students have “structured ideas” as a result of his guidance. That
is, through the lecture-discussion process, students are shown how the teacher argued and
reasoned about the textbook account. They then will hopefully develop ideas from his
guidance. It appears that Jerry does not have student-centered and constructivist notions
of teaching and learning (Brooks & Brooks, 1993). Because students are perceived to be

followers rather than initiators for understanding, Jerry’s teaching tends to involve whole-

group lecturing and discussions. In his definition of learning, he helps students structure

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their ideas through modeling to them how he challenged ideas. And, he does this
repeatedly in his instruction.

Another assumption about students that relates to multicultural teaching is Jerry’s
tendency to perceive his diverse students as individuals without trying to highlight their
ethnicity. He perceives students as individuals, thus in his practice, he does not see how
ethnicity can play a role in student learning. Like Lance, Jerry also believes that if
students make efforts, they will succeed. His instruction, hence, is not varied to respond
to diverse students’ learning styles, which nright be cultural. Research on multicultural
teaching and learning has contributed to our understanding about diverse learners. For
example, Hispanics benefit more than whites and Asians from group work (Golhrick &
Chinn, 1998). It seems that Jerry holds an assumption that student learning styles are not
cultural but more individual.

To Jerry, learning styles are more like individual personalities such as shyness.
Asked how be accommodated students’ learning styles, Jerry said, “when a person walks
and you look at their appearances, you can judge whether they are timid, you know, shy,
boisterous, just that you get that body language.” He also talked about how to assess
student response by how they respond to his questions. “You take like a general topic
and you get a sampling of what the students contribute to what’s that topic. You then in a
sense begin to figure out learning styles of individual students.” Some students are shy;
some are good at speaking up. He gave examples,

You realize then maybe like a Shawn, you know like he’s a shy young man,
it’s not that he’s not gonna come out and give you that [explanation], that you
got to draw it out for him so you got to come out and encourage him. You

know, “Wonderful, Shawn. Can you give me...” You got to take a person
like Lamar who learned to speak at a latest stage in life. Right. You got to

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[encourage] him, (speak softly)5 “Larrnar, hey, wonderful man, but we got to
hear it.” You can take a person like Courtney and you can look at her and say
(sit back in his chair straight, voice formal), “Courtney, analyze this for me:
All men are liars or all liars men?” And, you walk to the end of the classroom
and said (raise his voice), “Courtney, can’t hear you, sweet heart.” ‘Cause
what? You know Courtney has developed that sense of quick analysis. O.K.,
you switch another person, you get like, a girl, one of students called F antu.

F antu is from Vietnam... English is a problem language [to her]. So you got
to come up and you got to be that coach. You got to take the simplest
question like, “Why did chief Joseph decide to fight no more?” And, you got
to take that paragraph and you got to go in with pencil and get down to her
level ‘cause this is important (kneel down at the desk).

He noticed that a student speaks softly and needed to be encouraged to speak louder; a
student who has good insights about things; and a student whose language maybe a
barrier to her learning. He accommodated students’ learning styles by changing his tones
and questions for individual students, but not the instructional method. There is not much
variation in his pedagogy. Jerry said that his teaching style is basically the same. Like
Lance, the difference for him is students’ age or mattuity. With younger students, Jerry
said that he has to encourage them more and give more directions.

Students’ ethnicities do not play a role in his pedagogy. They also do not play a
role in Jerry’s curriculum. He believes that he should not teach certain history just
because he has a certain ethnic group of students in class.

Now, what does ethnicity play in terms of how I teach in all my classes? The
person’s ethnicity itself, I don’t look at. When I say look at, I don’t look at
them to judge them on their ethnicity. In other words, when I see an Asian
student, I don’t stop formulating in my mind that this is an Asian student and
I’ve got to do this or that. I see the ethnicity as separate but part of the
collective.

The collective is the “humanistic person” that Jerry believes everyone is. Jerry believes

all should share each other’s history. No matter what ethnicities students are, they should

 

5 I put Jerry’s action and voice in the interview in parentheses.

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all learn about the reality of the diverse human world.
So, all I kind of do at this point is hope that somewhere down the line as you
look out there as an individual represented of an ethnic group toward the
human race, you will see us each other not as black, as white, as anything,
but as brother and sister.
Jerry considers himself a “universal citizen,” and his world view projects an identity that
is universal first, hence, the implied goal is not to educate students to identify with their
own ethnicity and culture, but to perceive the variety of ethnicity as a collective of hmnan
diversity. The ultimate goal is a world of true unity. This notion does not conflict with
his conceptions that the history textbook is racially biased and that it is important for
students to know more about the multicultural history. It implies a vision that all people
own the multicultural past and present. However, the notion that all students need the
same kind of multicultural history implies an approach that is not individualized or
personal. Coupled with his whole-group instruction, individual students do not have the

Opportunity to pursue their questions and their own questions and their individual ethnic

histories.

Discussion
In the face of constraints of tests and texts, he finds teachable moments to infuse
multicultural information in his teaching and to raise epistemological changes. Seeing
himself as the “spider” connecting kids to knowledge, he draws on a wide-raging body of
knowledge and a variety of resources to spin a web of connectness—past to present,
between different ethnic groups, etc.

Nevertheless, Jerry’s beliefs about teaching and learning corresponds to Lance’s,

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which is teacher-centered. The comparison of the two teachers reveals the fact that
although Jerry has an inclusive conception of history and would like to challenge the
textbook account, he does not necessarily teach history in ways that are very different
from Lance, who holds a mainstream view of multiculturalism. The key point is that they
share the same kind of beliefs about teaching and leaming.

In teaching, pedagogy and subject matter are inseparable (Dewey, 1964b).
Students develop their notions of what knowledge is through the way knowledge is
conveyed to them (Ball & McDiarmid, 1990). Jerry’s challenge to the views presented
by the textbook may not effectively emphasize to students the constructive nature of
knowledge because his direct telling replaces one authoritative knowledge with another
one. Like Lance and Whitney, Jerry’s belief that students are not capable of evaluating
historical accounts, analyzing and synthesizing information encourages him to rely on
teacher-centered pedagogies about history, rather than engaging students in doing history.
Jerry may have the knowledge necessary to teach alternative interpretations of history;
his pedagogy, however, is not geared toward preparing students to construct historical
understanding.

James Banks highlights the importance of teaching knowledge construction and
having students compare the mainstream account and revisionist scholarships whenever
he talks about restructuring the curriculum (Banks, 1993; Banks, 1994c; Banks, 1995;
Banks, 1996). When the constructive nature of knowledge is taught to students, students
are likely to view the past fiom multiple perspectives and be capable of asking historical
questions themselves. They may be capable of asking questions of who are missing from

the narrative and why. They may go about finding the missing voices because they have

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learned about investigating history and constructing historical knowledge themselves
(Kobrin, 1992, 1996). However, such an approach to teaching history may well conflict
with teachers’ objective to comply to standardized tests and the socially defined more
powerful knowledge.

A distinct issue that Jerry raises for us is the dilemma of teaching multicultural
history in a system of assessment that values mainstream canonical knowledge. Can we
teach multicultural history in an honest way when the testing system and broader
environment has not changed6? Is it possible to teach multicultural history more in-depth
when the mainstream culture, values, knowledge, and structure impose a certain kind of
knowledge that teachers are expected to transmit?

The history of teachers’ teaching has indicated strong constancy of teacher-
centered instruction at the high school level, even though hybrids of student-centered
instruction are more frequently seen in elementary schools across (Cuban, 1993). Cuban
pointed out that change is difficult in schools, and in high schools particularly, because
prevailing cultural beliefs about the nature of knowledge, how teaching should occur and
how children should learn are widespread and deeply rooted in the minds of
policymakers, teachers, parents, students, and the public. Teacher-centered instruction
continues to dominate a lot of classrooms. Cuban firrther noted that change is difficult
because of the nature of schooling in a capitalist society (Anyon, 1981; Bowles & Gintis,
1976). The school organization and purpose to socialize and sort students into varied
socioeconomic tracks encourage teaching practices to concentrate on particular bodies of

content and skills that will inculcate in students, particularly minority students,

 

6 An example is Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn’s report in their book What Do Our 1 7- Year-Olds Know?
(1987) which stirred national angst for American students’ lack of knowledge about American standard

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mainstream values and dominant cultural knowledge. In the interest of reducing conflict
with the organization, teachers trade off their curriculum standard in favor of classroom
control (McNeil, 1986). They choose to simplify content and reduce demands on
students in return for classroom order and minimal student compliance on assignments.
The issue of continuing skill-based, teacher—centered instruction is complicated by black
teachers and scholars who are convinced that what low-income black students need in
their schooling is strengthening of their basic skills (Delpit, 1986; Delpit, 1988). Student-
centered instruction or more adventurous forms of instruction are seen as needed, but not
central to the needs of low-income black children. Apparently, Jerry’s goals for his
students could be very complicated based on his understanding about what students need.
Taking a father-and-mentor role, Jerry is at the center of his instruction, telling students
what academically and socially appropriate things to do in order to succeed. Instead of
teaching an ethnocentric curriculum, Jerry teaches the textbook without totally following
it. He challenges, and he complies.

Powerful cultural and organizational resistance to change seems to be in place at
the high school level. The kind of time, structure, and open-ended discussions on
differing perspectives and controversial issues are contradictory to the more bureaucratic
and capitalistic nature of U.S. schooling. What then, is the hope for multicultural reform?
Cuban’s study concluded that teachers’ knowledge of the subject matter and their
professional and personal beliefs about the role of the school in society, classroom
authority, and children’s ethnic and socioeconomic status shape classroom practices. In
other words, teachers do change. Although teacher-centered instruction dominates

classroom practices, variations of student-centered instruction occur. Cuban’s witness of

 

history.

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steady growth of teachers adopting hybrid versions of reform movements convinces him
that teachers will continue to modify their teacher-centeredness and will move, albeit
slowly, to more student-centered classroom organization and instruction.

A lesson to be learned from the history of teachers’ teaching is that teachers still
are the agents of educational change. Tyack and Cuban (1995) argued that schools
change reforms, hence, they encouraged teachers to create hybrids suited to their
contexts. Historically, teachers do make changes gradually producing hybrids that help
meet competing demands. Recognizing the limitation of standardized curricula and
assessments, multicultural educators still believe that there is flexibility in schools and
choice that teachers can make to teach multicultural materials in a more integrative rather
than additive way (Miller-Lachmann & Taylor, 1995). There are teachers, like Margaret
Harris, who offer us good examples of a high school teacher who moves away fi-om
teaching the traditional textbook-oriented formula for teaching U.S. history to one who
constantly asks about the missing voices in historical events (Harris, 1995). At the same
time, a conscientious and sophisticated teacher like Jerry reminds us of the difiicult

choices each teacher faces.

Conclusion
Jerry’s interpretive conception of history has an efiect on his approach to
critiquing the textbook account. By doing so, Jerry would like to sensitize students’
awareness of printed texts. Jerry does that through raising his viewpoint to counter the
textbook account. His making connections for students of different events across time

and space helps students to view history as shared human experiences. His attention to

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experiences of minorities, however, remains additive. The major sources of the historical
knowledge in his classroom are the textbook and himself. Jerry’s instruction is
characterized by his elaboration and critiques of the texts. Although he would like to
have an inclusive history, and sometimes he brought in different sources, his teaching
remains focused on teaching the mainstream history. More in-depth studies about
diflerent groups of people’s experiences do not occur in his classroom. Important factors
that shape his teaching are: (l) the conflict between teaching multicultural history and
helping students to succeed in the mainstream society which tests students’ canonical

knowledge; and (2) his beliefs that teachers ought to give and students absorb knowledge.

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CHAPTER VI
MULTICULTURAL HISTORY TEACHING: CULTURAL TRANSMISSION AND
MULTICULTURALISM

As the U.S. society became increasingly diverse and the field of history reflected
more about the multicultural past of the country, reformers of history and social studies
education began to call for a more inclusive history curriculum. In the wake of
multicultural education, social studies teachers often express that they would like to teach
multicultural materials (Borland, 1994; Tighe, 1994; Titus, 1992); some identify
multiculturalism as an important theme in their curriculum (J anzen, 1995). In the
meantime, debates about including different groups of people’s stories in U.S. history
teaching raise questions about what history should be taught in schools (Bloom, 1987;
Combleth & Waugh, 1995; Ravitch, 1991; Schlesinger, 1992). But few studies have been
done to describe what teachers actually do and think about teaching multicultural
history/social studies (Mehan, Lintz, Okamoto, & Wills, 1995; Montecinos & Tidwell,
1996; Wills, 1996b).

This poses a problem for the public to understand debates about teaching the
multicultural past of the United States in an intelligent way. They do not know about the
many things that are involved in teaching multicultural history, hence, they lack
information to make judgement about what the issues are. Our lack of understanding
about classroom realities also prevents us from identifying problems that may help us
prepare teachers to teach multicultural history in ways that go beyond the contributions
and additive approaches (Banks, 1991). In this chapter, I try to compare and discuss the

three cases with an intention to raise issues for a more intelligent debate in multicultural

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history education.

In the previous chapters, I described and analyzed Lance, Whitney and Jerry’s
beliefs and practices. Although Lance, Whitney and Jerry each express a commitment to
multiculturalism, they do not teach the same version of multicultural history—either in
terms of the content that they deal with or the methods that they employ. Visiting each
classroom, the observer is struck by sharp differences in the instructional techniques,
resources used and foci of discussion. These are three distinctive teachers, each with
complex understandings about history, history teaching and conscious arguments for the
teaching practice he/she has constructed. We can learn much from the range of ideas and
approaches these three teachers offer.

Yet unique as each teacher is, there is striking similarity in their choice of an
additive version of multiculturalism. In fact, contrary to what traditionalists worry about
that multiculturalism disrupts the mainstream chronology and narrative, all three of these
teachers teach multicultural history in ways that maintain the traditional narrative. Their
approaches to teaching multicultural history vary; however, the results of their instruction
are all additive to the existing history curriculum. Their instruction does not attempt to
transform the concepts and structure of the existing history. The teachers have their
reasons and circumstances to use an additive approach to teaching multicultural history;
their judgments about what history should be taught are mediated by factors that go
beyond their desire to teach a more inclusive curriculum. Challenges that these teachers
face need to be explored, and thus is an important purpose of this study.

My analyses of the teachers echo research findings on history teaching and learning

more generally. History teaching is mediated by teachers’ conceptions of history (Evans,

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1989; Yeager & O. L. Davis, 1996), beliefs about teaching and learning (McDiarmid,
Ball, & Anderson, 1989; McDiarmid, 1995), subject matter knowledge (Wilson, 1988;
Wilson & Wineburg, 1988; Wineburg & Wilson, 1991), as well as their goals (Barr,
Barth, & Shermis, 1977; Brubaker, Simon, & Wiliams, 1977; Janzen, 1995; Martorella,
1996). As these factors play out in teaching multicultural history, they highlight complex
and unresolved dimensions in teachers’ conception of history, knowledge, beliefs about
teaching and learning, and goals. Each of the factors plays out in the case study teachers’
teaching difierently. Not every teacher is equally influenced by each of the factors. For
different reasons, the three teachers are influenced by the factors in various ways and to
different degrees. But looking across these three cases, as I do in this chapter, we can
begin to learn fi'om the three teachers what makes teaching multicultural history difficult
and challenging. The teachers face challenges of more “personal” factors—their
conceptions, beliefs, knowledge, and goals. They also face “external” challenges, which
are the narrative problem in a nation’s history and the difficulties of teaching
multicultural history in an era of standards and standardized tests.

In this chapter I will first point out some “personal” factors that mediate the three
teachers’ multicultural history teaching. These factors help explain why Lance, Whitney
and Jerry approach multicultural history teaching the way they do. In discussing each
factor, I compare and contrast the teachers’ approaches. Then, I will explain what makes
multicultural history teaching difiicult in terms of what they individually bring into their
classrooms. Finally, problems that are embedded in the call for teaching multicultural
history, the challenges in the field of history discipline, and difficulties in the broader

context that all teachers are facing will be pointed out.

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Mediating Multicultural History Teaching

Like all teaching, multicultural history teaching is mediated by the teachers’
various frames of references. My investigation has focused on the teachers’ conceptions
of history and their beliefs about teaching and learning, which I found to have a
significant influence on the teachers’ curricula. Equally important and powerful
influences are their subject matter knowledge and goals for teaching history. These
factors emerged from my observations of the teachers’ practices and my interviews with
them as they reflected upon what they chose to do and not do. However, those categories
of conceptions, beliefs, knowledge and goals are not discrete. Often they relate to each
other. For example, conception of history is related to teachers’ subject matter
knowledge; teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning are connected to their
conception of history and subject matter knowledge. However, it is still useful to define
some categories for my analysis. Identifying those factors is important to our
understanding about multicultural history teaching. They serve as angles for us to discuss
ways to improve multicultural history teaching and the quality of our debates about

multicultural history education.

Teachers’ Conceptions of History
Research findings on history teaching have reported that teachers’ conceptions of
history influence their approaches to teaching history (Evans, 1989; Yeager & O. L.
Davis, 1996). I found in this study that teachers’ conceptions of history mediate their
multicultural history teaching. That is, the way they think about history affects their

notions about what history should be taught and how best to teach history to students.

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Before analyzing the teachers’ conceptions, I would like to set the stage by
describing what multicultural theoristsl consider to be important conceptions of
knowledge in multicultural teaching. Influenced by critical, postmodern and feminist
thoughts (Cherryholrnes, 1992; Foucault, 1972; Habermas, 1971; Harding, 1991; Rorty,
1989), multiculturalists regard knowledge as socially constructed and that personal,
cultural, and social factors influence the formulation of knowledge. Multicultural
scholars align themselves with those scholars in arguing that modern science and
empirical knowledge are not value-free; they contain human interests and normative
assumptions about what should be discussed and examined (Banks, 1993). Multicultural
and social historians argue that mainstream U.S. history has been written by European
elite men who interpret the past from European American perspectives, leaving ethnic
minorities and women out of the big picture. Mainstream historical knowledge, hence, is
lacking without those voices. Multiculturalists perceive systematic omission and biases
as problematic. Sleeter and Grant’s (1991) textbook analysis revealed that Native
Americans are seen mainly as historical figures; the story line usually includes Asian
Americans only briefly and mainly as immigrants in the work force; Black heroes and

heroines are presented in the civil rights movement, but usually the textbooks do not

 

’ The term “multiculturalists” or “multicultural theorists” may not enjoy consensus in the public discourse.
Diane Ravitch, who is considered a conservative or western traditionalist by Banks (1993), may consider
herself to be promoting multicultural values and knowledge (1990). David Kobrin, a scholar who does
most of his work on educating teachers and students to “do history” also has his opinions on how doing
history can meet the needs of the multicultural calling (1992). Those people write about their ideas about
multicultural education, but do not develop systematic theories about what multicultural education is and
what it might look like in classrooms. People who have developed systematic theories about multicultural
education, such as James Banks, tend to promote the achievement of social justice by reforming society.
They encourage students to investigate racism, sexism, classism, and how societal institutions have served
different population in discriminatory ways. When Banks said that there is high level of consensus about
aims and scope in the literature written by multicultural education theorists (Banks, 1995a), he is referring
to those scholars who take critical theory and social action approaches. They include Sleeter and Grant
(1994), Banks (1991, 1993), Nieto (1992), Bennett (1995), and Gollnick and Chinn (1998). And, these are
the people whom I call “multiculturalists” or “multicultural theorists” in this research.

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provide an Afiican American perspective on events and issues. The authors found that
“people of color collectively are not portrayed as solvers of their own problems” (p.86).
Their analysis showed that the narrative has no real discussions of the lives of those
groups of people.

Multicultural theorists’ conception of history, then, is “transformative
knowledgez” according to Banks (1993). By that, Banks means the kind of knowledge
that helps students rethink the nature of knowledge by exposing students to more
information and altemative perspectives. It is a “critical” and “social reconstructionist3”
approach to knowledge, according to Sleeter and Grant (1994, 1995). Sleeter and Grant
aimed to examine alternative perspectives, and they focused especially on how
knowledge of the dominant group renders minorities of race, gender, social classes and
other groups powerless. Knowledge to multiculturalists involves “critical perspective”
according to Nieto ( 1992), or “multiple historical perspectives” according to Bennett
(1995). Although the terms are different, the nature of their claims are similar. These
multicultural scholars all claim the importance of challenging the European American
perspective that dominates the popular cultures, university research and textbook writings
(Banks, 1996; Loewen, 1995; Sleeter & Grant, 1991). Nieto (1992) and Bennett (1995)
talk about how textbook accounts are skewed toward European American perspectives.
They discuss the necessity to include perspectives of women’s and difi‘erent ethnic

groups’ into the curriculum. Banks argues the same point that, for example, when

 

2 The need to have “transformative knowledge” in the cuniculum is highlighted every time Banks
advocates for multicultural education.

3 Sleeter and Grant categorized multicultural education into five approaches: Teaching the Exceptional and
the Culturally Different, Human Relations, Single-Group Studies, Multicultural Education, and Education
that is Multicultural and Social Reconstructionist. Education that is Multicultural and Social
Reconstructionist is Sleeter and Grants’ preferred approach.

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teaching the Westward Movement, students need to analyze how popular culture depicts
the West and how the textbook omits perspectives of Native Americans and Afiican
Americans in the West (1993). Sleeter and Grant (1995) stress how mainstream
schooling reinforces the “regimes of tru ” along the lines of race, class, gender, and
sexual orientation. They advocate an education that takes social actions (see also Banks’
“social action approach”, 1991) and try to reconstruct a society that is more just and equal
to groups of people who are marginalized because of their race, ethnicity, gender, social
class, and other differences.

These authors have developed a growing body of work elaborating these
conceptions of history. Others certainly have taken issue with them. But this debate
about conceptions has left out teachers’ own conceptions. The three case study teachers
have well developed and complex conceptions which do not perfectly mirror any theory.
Yet finding that their conceptions of history influenced their teaching makes it especially
important, at a moment of national debate about conceptions of history to examine both
how individual teachers may envision history and how that can influence their
multicultural history teaching. I found that the three teachers’ different conceptions of
history have effects on their multicultural teaching. However, the significance of the
effect varies in different teachers.

Lance. Lance’s conception of history is shared by many teachers. That is, even
though he acknowledged that there are different versions and interpretations of the Civil
War and Reconstruction, he believes that there is one best account about the U.S. past.
This view is held by most of us who would like to have a coherent view about the past.

This is a legitimate desire. The nature of historians’ work is to provide a coherent

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explanation of what happened and how the society and nation work (Bender, 1986;
Higham, 1994). It becomes problematic if the narrative is held to be the “Truth” in ways
that other narratives do not get recognized.

Lance holds his narrative stable and believes that the history he teaches is the
foundational knowledge that every student should learn. This is what he called the “hard
history” or “straight history” that he outlined in his curriculum (see Appendix F). He
does not think that this curriculum can be restructured. If he were to change the
cuniculum, he would think about adding some more Presidential administrations in the
90s. He rarely employs outside materials in part because he believes that students do not
read a lot, and in part because in his conception, history is about teaching what he
considers to be the most balanced account. Asked if he would be concerned about the
interpretation he took, Lance answered, “I guess I know enough that I can kind of trust
my interpretation to at least help kids understand some things without being maybe
totally biased.” In his lectures, Lance communicates the content of history to be about
the Truth. Lance fiequently wanted to make sure that students understood his points by
asking individual students, “do you understand?”

Minorities in Lance’s narrative structure are mentioned when discussing social
problems or issues. For example, when talking about immigration, Lance wanted
students to be able to answer in the tests who came, when, and why, but he did not delve
into details of these different peoples’ experiences in America. When teaching about
racism as an issue in Reconstruction, the perspective in his narrative was Euro-centric in
the sense that Afiican Americans were discussed entirely as victims and no voice was

heard from African Americans. When the story is told as such, it would be hard to

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incorporate another view that Afiican Americans were agents of change in the period of
Reconstruction.

Whitney. Whitney’s conception of history also affects her teaching. Although
her subject matter knowledge constrains her ability to teach students how to do history,
her conception of history enables her to look for materials about women and minorities in
certain historical periods. To her, history is not just about'elite males who hold power. It
is also not just about famous women like Amelia Earhardt or Eleanor Roosevelt. It is
about ordinary women as well. She would find materials about ordinary people’s lives,
women’s accounts, and information about other minorities. Therefore, in her curriculum,
there are more social history topics, i.e., culture/family life of the 1950’s or experiences
of Native American Indians 1945-1960 (see Appendix G for her curriculum outline).
Students in Whitney’s class get more chances to hear about different voices.
Opportunities for students to listen to different perspectives are there. Her conception
that history has more dimensions seems to make a difference in her inclination to look for
topics other than what her textbook lists. Substantively, she has tried to insert materials
about women and ethnic minorities, which distinguishes her from teachers like Lance,
who tends to teach the mainstream topics characterized by wars and political leaders.

Jerry. - Jerry’s conception that history is constructed, or in his words, “lies we
agree upon,” enables him to look at events from alternative perspectives. He is aware of
how one event could be viewed differently from difierent perspectives when he covers
the textbook content. One of Jerry's favorite approaches to teaching U.S. History is to
discuss a narrative in the textbook and give his opinions on the text, critiquing the

textbook presentation of what happened. He said, "I am big on taking an incident, a

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person, a fact or the past, and analyze it to a degree." Instead of following the conclusion
of the textbook narrative, he would point out to students how African Americans would
look at the Industrial Revolution differently than European Americans, and how the
Chinese may look at the Boxer Rebellion differently than the Europeans. Asked why he
did that, he said, "One of the reasons I do that is simply because I don't want them to
become comfortable in any one explanation that is given."

Analysis. There is a relationship between these teachers’ conceptions of history
and their practices. Lance’s European-master—narrative view affects his choice of
contents to cover and perhaps his ways of teaching. When history is construed as a single
best story, then the teacher is not likely to look for other topics or materials to counter the
existing narrative. In contrast, Whitney’s and Jerry’s conceptions of history encourage
them to think about teaching something difi‘erent than the existing textbook account.

However, it does not seem that a more inclusive conception of history guarantees
effective multicultural history teaching. In their articulated conceptions, Whitney and
Jerry both express that history is more than one perspective. However, Whitney’s and
Jerry’s practices are very difierent and produce very different results. Whitney’s students
may have the experience of reading and watching different materials, but they may not
learn more about the nature of history and big ideas involved in reading different
accounts given the way Whitney deals with her multicultural materials.

Jerry’s more critical view of history does not produce a more adventurous form of
teaching, e. g., having students debate about conflicting accounts. However, it appears
that Jerry’s making alternative perspectives explicit in class provides epistemological

challenges to students. My study cannot answer the question of the effectiveness of his

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teaching because I have not collected students’ accounts about what they learned.
However, it seems that Jerry’s lecture has the potential to challenge students’ thinking
about perspectives because he makes it clear to them how depending on which side you
are on, your views about an event would be different. In this sense, his conception of
history seems to have a positive effect on his teaching.

The major difference between the teachers’ conceptions of history and the
theorists’ is whether they view history as social construction and how perspectives such
as race, gender, and class affect interpretations of the past. Jerry shares similar views
with the theorists’ in the sense that he is conscious about how viewpoints are key to
historical interpretations. In contrast, Lance’s conception of history does not leave room
for interpretations. Whitney’s conception of history is inclusive. Yet the conception does
not imply an understanding of the socially constructive nature of history, which sets hers
apart from Jerry’s conception of history. What this finding implies to multicultural
scholars is that teachers’ conceptions of history are worth exploring. There are many
variations of conceptions of history that have effect on teaching history.

Conception of history cannot explain totally why teachers teach multicultural
history difierenfly. They are also affected by their beliefs about teaching and learning,
subject matter knowledge and goals for history teaching, which I discuss in the following

sections.
leachers’ Beliefs about Teachingand Learning

Another important mediator of multicultural history teaching is teachers’ beliefs

about teaching and learning. I found that teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning

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greatly affect their instructional choice. When multicultural theorists develop their
theories of multicultural education, they seem to assume that curriculum cannot be
separated from instruction. Multicultural theorists generally support certain pedagogy
that will facilitate learning in a way that promotes critical thinking among diverse
students rather than trying to use rote memorization to coerce cultural understanding.
Multicultural theorists do not believe that simply adding ethnic holidays or
information about ethnic groups will be a good multicultural curriculum; they also
believe that standard pedagogy used in many schools is unappealing to most students
(N ieto, 1992). The goal of multicultural theorists is not very different from general
educators: trying to find teaching approaches that will engage all students. Teachers try
to make students more active learners by providing a more culturally sensitive learning
environment in a diverse classroom. Multiculturalists encourage teachers to explore a
variety of pedagogy, such as collaborative work, individualized tasks, research, and peer
tutoring, to facilitate learning in different students. Banks (1994) said, “The multicultural
curriculum should be implemented with teaching strategies that are involvement oriented,
interactive, personalized, and cooperative (p.96).” He further said that a teacher-centered
instruction is especially inappropriate when teaching multicultural content because it is
an area where diversity is valued and different perspectives are an important part of the
curriculum. Therefore, a student-centered instruction is preferred in multicultural
teaching. A democratic classroom atmosphere is also preferred because the classroom is
a forum where multiple perspectives are valued (Banks, 1993). Students are not regarded
as passive recipients of knowledge, but active learners who construct knowledge. Banks

(1993) describes what he considers to be multicultural teaching: “students should be

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involved in the debates about knowledge construction and conflicting interpretations,
such as the extent to which Egypt and Phoenicia influenced Greek civilization (p. 5).”

Banks and Banks (in Banks, 1997) pointed out that to implement multicultural
education, teachers’ assumptions about teaching, students, and learning need to be
changed. Teaching would no longer be didactic knowledge transmission, especially
when teachers need to take into consideration different students’ cultural backgrounds
and learning styles. Students are not considered to be empty vessels waiting to be filled.
Instead, all students are believed to be capable of learning and constructing knowledge.
Learning therefore involves a lot of discovery and inquiry, reflection and critical
perspective. The classroom is a place where different perspectives and opinions get
expressed and challenged. The teachers also help students examine the power
relationships in society; students will acquire critical perspectives for active participation
in promoting social justice.

With what theorists say about teaching and learning in mind, we turn to look at
the teachers and see what they believe about teaching and learning, how their practices
are influenced by such beliefs, and what makes the difference among the teachers.

Lance. Lance teaches in a community with nearly all students white. His
assumption about students is that students are pretty homogeneous in their
backgrounds—i.e., middle-class, materialistic, conservative students. He believes that at
their young age, those teenagers do not want to be in schools; they are more interested in
“social things,” meaning friends and parties; and, he said that it is a “hard fight” to try to
get them interested in history. Among the three teachers, Lance talked about students’

problems the most. He has tried to vary his instruction to accommodate the “resource

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students” (slower learners in the school who were identified in the school). But, the
accommodation is that he would give them an “essay test” instead of a “fill-in—the-blank”
kind of test. Lance said the difference is just that he gives more time to the slower kids.
The regular students have to be tested for fast recall.

Lance struggles with students’ lacking motivation in their learning. But, he seems
to believe strongly in his approaches—lectures and issue-orientated discussions. He has
made up his mind about his pedagogy. Asked if he has tried using primary documents,
inviting guest speakers, conducting debates, doing group work, and various kinds of
teaching strategies, Lance said that he has tried using many of the activities. But, he
decided that those are not very effective strategies. He recognized that his lecturing
method may not be suitable to all students and said that that is a drawback to his
approach, but he argued that if students make an effort, they usually can make it. In
Lance’s personal experience, he learned the most when teachers did something like he
does—provide analysis and explanation for historical events, rather than covering trivial
factual information and having students do worksheets and answer end-of-chapter
questions. Those are what good teachers do. His pedagogy is determined out of his
conviction that he is giving students a good quality history curriculum.

Lecturing can be conceptual and helpful to a coherent understanding of events,
especially when the teacher tries to provide basic background information for the study of
a new topic. It is also helpful as a means to synthesize and cover large segments of
information between topics (Stephens, 1974). However, as a dominant format, it
provides less chance for students to engage in the activity of asking questions that are

authentic to their interests and looking for information and drawing conclusions to

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answer their questions. Lance’s assumption that students are more interested in social
things than academic work, or that students do not read in a thorough way result in his
belief that he should give students his analysis rather than have students read primary
documents or do historical analysis for themselves. His prior experience as a learner
reinforces his belief that what students need is his synthesis.

Asked if his instruction would differ in different classes, Lance said that he does
not change his instruction because of students. He said that I may see him asking more
questions in a class where he has more “resource students” than others, but his methods
are basically the same. Interestingly, his commitment to fairness drives part of his
pedagogy; he does not probe students’ backgrounds for fear of labeling them.
Collectively, students are assumed by Lance to be like “today’s teenagers” who are
materialistic and interested in social things rather than academic work. Many of their
ideas are conservative and need to be challenged. Because students are not assumed to
have different needs, he sees no need to explore alternative methods. As a result, his
teacher-centered instruction continues to be the most favored approach.

Whitney. In contrast to Lance’s teaching styles, Whitney’s, e. g., doing research
and art projects, create more opportunities for students to express their ideas and
encourage different ways of thinking about history. Research has shown that doing
history and teaching art as history can help students understand history in an engaging
and authentic way (Levstik & Barton, 1997). Whitney’s choice of strategies has the
potential to engage students in learning history in a meaningful way. Her belief that
teaching is more than lecturing and that the teacher has to be creative in exploring

instructional methods holds great potential for her to teach history in an engaging form.

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Whitney believes that she has to have a variety of teaching strategies in order to
keep students interested in the subject. However, she does not seem to have the
knowledge and intellectual skills necessary to take full advantage of her various teaching
strategies. When using a group research project for students to learn about the Industrial
Revolution, Whitney assessed student presentation by judging whether they made visual
aids, rather than whether they made sense of their materials.

Whitney has a conception that teaching students skills is more important than
giving them facts. She had said, “it’s more important to know how to go and find
information than to memorize facts.” She also said that she believed in “the old ‘give
them a fish and eat for a day, teach him how to fish [and eat] for a life’ thing.” But, the
conception has not helped her know more about what it means to teach skills. Whitney
said that with her multi-disciplinary college background, she is not an expert in any
discipline. Asked if not being an expert in history is something she would worry about,
she replied, “I think about my teaching style and about what the state (meaning the state
university) and what the other social studies teachers are saying about where instruction
is heading that I’m supposed to be a coach, not a lecturer, I don’t worry about it quite so
much. I’m supposed to put resources in their hands and guide them in certain directions,
but I don’t have to know all the facts.” The implication that she has the subject matter
knowledge and the skills necessary to teach history is problematic in Whitney’s case.
Because she has assumed that she knows how to provide students the skills, she is
satisfied with her instructional methods and the results of her students’ performance.

Without deeper subject matter knowledge, Whitney’s pedagogy suffers. Her

attempts to guide students become ineffective. In Whitney’s belief about teaching and

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learning, teachers are coaches. However, the way she guides appears to be more like
managing activities. It affects her multicultural teaching in such a way that even though
her materials contain interesting multicultural contents, she is not able to get students to
understand more in-depth about different perspectives. For example, in helping students
do their research project, she gave directions about what three sources to use (two
encyclopedias and the textbook), what information to look for and how to present to the
class. She supplies materials, e.g., transparencies, markers, and construction paper.
However, she is weak in giving intellectual directions. She would suggest students to do
a diagram, or find five ways that electricity affected people’s lives, but she could not help
students think conceptually, for example, about the inventions and how the Industrial
Revolution affected women, children and immigrants.

Whitney teaches also in a community with the majority of students white; she has
a Mexican American girl in her class. Her assumptions about students are similar to
Lance’s—it is hard to keep students interested in history. Therefore, the instruction has
to be fun. Asked what sense she has about students’ knowledge about the multicultural
past of America, Whitney said, “you know I don’t think that I’ve stopped to think about
that like what do they know about other ethnic groups before they watched the movie
Glory, or something else.” She said that she had assumed that students do not know
about information about other ethnic groups. The only Mexican American student is very
dutiful in class; she does her work well according to Whitney. While this study was
being conducted, Whitney began to think about her. She said that she would like to meet
her needs, but she did not have the resources about Hispanic Americans.

Whitney’s beliefs about teaching and learning afi‘ect her teaching in ways that

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enable her to explore alternative teaching strategies. Yet, her inadequate understanding
about what it means to teach skills through her teaching activities and lack of
understanding about students’ prior knowledge and needs do not allow her to teach
multicultural history in a more challenging way.

Jerry. Jerry describes his role as a teacher being a motivator, father, and actor
who wears many hats. In his “teachable moments” or spontaneous occasions, he would
give students pep talks about the importance of going to college and how efforts are more
important and that “nobody was born smart.” In terms of teaching the subject matter and
helping students learn it, Jerry seems to share Lance’s views about teaching and learning.
Both Jerry and Lance believe that the teacher has to be the person who “guides.” By
being a guide, the teacher provides foundational knowledge.

Like Lance, Jerry believes that by providing students major concepts that he
elaborated, students would come away with some ideas to hopefully help them think for
themselves in the future. Jerry considers himself as a “spider” taking in students, but
instead of eating them, he feeds his students with what he knows. It is a metaphor of
knowledge transmission with him at the center of the web taking in students and
providing them knowledge. He describes the teaching profession as “a web of
information.” He sees the teacher at the center of the web determining his curriculum. “1
am seeing myself here dispensing information,” he said. “You sort of giving them all
that added information that you got in you. In other words, you are just pouring it all out
to them,” Jerry described how he would allude to all kinds of knowledge from
“government, and end up with it’s important for you to get your education and not get

pregnant, or it’s important for you to stay ofi the street, or it’s important to you to help

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your fellowmen or I can share with them the fact that Mount Everest, as people are
climbing it, it’s getting polluted.” Jerry’s role is like a mentor who tells students about
different things to guide them into the world.

By analyzing things for students, Jerry does not think that he is indoctrinating
students. “I don’t tell students that they are wrong,” said Jerry. He also said that “I
respect my students’ right to disagree with me.” But, in practice, Jerry has the final say
about the conclusion, especially when he disagrees with the textbook interpretation.
Jerry’s teacher-centered instruction aims to provide students ideas and important
knowledge to challenge their thoughts, the same with Lance’s hope. Different from
Lance’s assumption that students are not interested in learning, Jerry thinks of students as
“sponges” who are “always observing something.” “There’s always moisture in the air
which is information, that’s always filtering in their brain,” Jerry said. The implication is
that he is responsible to expose students to information he knows.

Jerry favors lecturing and “analyzing” textbook account with teacher-directed
discussions. Although his students are from diverse ethnic backgrounds, Jerry does not
vary his academic instruction according to who his students are. He bases his instruction
and curriculum more on what he has to cover and what he believes to be effective
teaching strategies. Like Lance, Jerry said that his method does not change across
classes. The difference would only be students’ “maturity level.” With younger students,
he has to encourage them more. Although Jerry does not vary his academic instruction
for his diverse students, he is sensitive about his students’ needs on life messages. In his
“teachable moments,” Jerry told students how it is important to stay in school and go to

college. Like a father and mentor, he gives his life knowledge to students.

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Jerry has European, African, Hispanic, and Asian American students in his class.
He said that he does not look at students’ ethnicity when he teaches all his classes. “In
other words, when I see an Asian student, I don’t stop formulating in my mind that this is
an Asian student and I’ve got to do this or that,” he said. Jerry argues that he is teaching
U.S. history and he would be conscious about his Asian students when teaching Japanese
bombing of Pearl Harbor, but he does not choose to teach it just because of the fact that
he has certain ethnic groups in his class. Jerry’s rationale is that he would like to see
students as a part of the “collective human race.” He is concerned about labeling students
and having stereotypical views about students’ ethnicity.

Jerry’s belief that the teacher is at the center dispensing knowledge to students
who absorb information that is exposed to them is similar to Lance’s views about
teaching and learning. Although Jerry’s teaching pushes students harder to think
critically about texts and perspectives, the transmitting view makes Jerry’s class more
teacher-centered rather than student-centered. In addition, Jerry’s belief in teaching the
individuals without taking into account his or her ethnicity seems to add to his additive
approach to teaching history.

Analysis. There are several points that the teachers’ beliefs about teaching and
learning raise for us. First, the teachers’ assumptions about students seem to legitimize a
lot of what they do in class. All three teachers assume that students are not able to do
analysis and construct knowledge. Researchers have demonstrated that it is possible that
even at the elementary level that students learn to think historically and weigh historical
evidence (Levstik & Barton, 1997; Levstik & Pappas, 1992). David Kobrin even argued

that the best way to teach multicultural history is through teaching students to become

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historians (Kobrin, 1992; Kobrin, 1996). Other scholars also believe that teaching
students about the constructive nature of history is essential in transforming their
understanding about historical accounts (Banks, 1995b; Singer, 1992; Stearns, 1993).

The history debates about what history should be taught in schools tend to slight
the importance of educating citizens to become critical thinkers who have the habit of
mind and critical thinking skills to make historical judgments (Nash, 1995; Stearns,
1993). Underlying the arguments for the cultural and historical literacy seems to be the
assumption that students are passive learners waiting to be molded (Bloom, 1987;
D'Souza, 1991; Hirsch, 1988). According to multicultural theorists, teaching history in a
multicultural way assumes that students are active learners who will be able to construct
knowledge from multiple and multicultural perspectives. Such kind of training is
believed to be important to a pluralistic democracy where diverse citizens learn to make
better judgment about their actions in today’s society (Banks, 1997).

But the fact that these three diflerent teachers could all hold the view that students
cannot analyze and construct knowledge reminds us not to minimize the difficulty of
challenging teachers’ conceptions of learning. Teachers need to be convinced that it is
desirable to view the learners as active participants of knowledge construction. They
need to be shown why it is important in teaching multicultural history that different
cultural perspectives are examined and how history could be interpreted differently based
on the same evidence and sometimes different evidence. They need to be convinced that
a more student-centered instruction is truly conducive to history learning, particularly to
teaching history in a multicultural way. Theorists talk generally about this. The three

cases point out the complex set of changes and supports that could be needed.

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Second, none of these three teachers has the inclination to probe students’ prior
knowledge and cultural backgrounds. Lance and Jerry, out of concerns about
stereotyping, consciously avoid seeing differences among students. With his
homogeneous group of white students, Lance does not want to have presurnptions about
who will and will not learn. Jerry also has the same concern. In addition, he argues that
he does not want to assume that students’ cultural backgrounds will make them interested
in certain kind of history lessons. Their concerns are legitimate because often we
Stereotype students by categorizing them. However, the tradeoff is that teachers then
assume that students learn the same way and bring in the same kind of knowledge.

It is important, according to theorists, that in multicultural teaching that teachers
need to built upon students’ prior knowledge, including their culturally sensitive
knowledge, in order to teach well (McDiarmid, 1991; Noordhoff, 1993). Teachers will
then be able to decide what to teach and what strategies to use appropriately (Gollnick &
Chinn, 1998). Multicultural educators also are careful about students’ learning styles.
Learning styles have been identified as an important variable in the school success of
ethnic minorities in the United States (Bennett, 1995; Shade, 1989). For example, studies
on the learning styles of Native American and Alaskan children have established the
importance of visualization in learning; children learn through careful observation
(Swisher & Deyhle, 1987). There has been a lot of study focusing on the learning styles
of Afiican American children and youth (Hale-Benson, 1986; Shade, 1982). Black
children’s learning styles are often described as relational as opposed to the analytical
style rewarded in schools. The importance of attending to ethnic minorities’ learning

styles can be underscored by the fact that Asian American children tend to be channeled

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to the technical/scientific fields because they generally are perceived by teachers as hard-
working, quiet and docile; hence, they often do not develop the ability to assert and
express themselves verbally (Yoshiwara, 1983).

While this large body of research argue for such sensitivity, the case study
teachers’ concerns about stereotyping students are important. Teachers do need to take
into consideration the potential to stereotype students. How can teachers reconcile the
research-based argument about learning style with a commitment to avoid labeling?
More research needs to be done to handle this delicate boundary between facilitating
student learning and stereotyping students in a multicultural setting. This study suggests
that this tension has been an under-examined part of multicultural theorists’ discussion.

Third, following the second point is the idea that developing pedagogy that
bridges the subject matter and students is important. Both Lance and Jerry seem to be set
in their approaches. They do not like group work or collaborative learning. They have
come to believe that their current methods suit their purposes the best. Whitney is more
interested in using different methods because she believes that students need variety to
stay interested. However, the connection between the subject matter and students in her
teaching is loose. In multicultural teaching, it is important that teachers are willing to
explore alternative teaching strategies in order to help students learn about the important
concepts and contents of multicultural history. It is especially important when the
teachers teach in diverse settings where students may learn in difl’erent ways. Because
teachers assume that students are the same, they do not think that methods would make a
difference.

Dewey (1964a) believes that there is a bridge to be built between the curricultun

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and the child. Teachers who have knowledge about both the child and the curriculum
decide what pedagogy to bridge the two. Both learners’ prior knowledge, interests, needs
and the nature of the subject matter are important pedagogical considerations. However,
as revealed by the cases, it is diflicult for teachers not to emphasize one over the other.
Lance and Jerry emphasized the curriculum more than the students based on what they
know about teaching and learning. Whitney is yet another approach—emphasizing her

teaching skills over the subject matter and students.

Subject Matter Knowlede

I had not designed this study to probe teachers’ subject matter knowledge. I
focused on studying teachers’ conceptions of history, beliefs and goals. I also examined
their practices to see what approaches they took to teach multicultural history. But,
subject matter knowledge emerged as an important factor in explaining the three
teachers’ practices. What multicultural theorists would like teachers to do, e. g., teaching
about knowledge construction and challenging structural injustice, require teachers to
have both knowledge of the subject matter and knowledge about the subject matter4 (Ball
& McDiarmid, 1990). It is based on subject matter knowledge that teachers form
“visions” for structures for curriculum and classroom activities (Wineburg & Wilson,
1991). This section can serve as a window for future research that tries to understand
teachers’ subject matter knowledge in the domain of multicultural history. Again, I will
first introduce what multicultural theorists say about subject matter knowledge. Then,
analyses of the teachers will follow.

Most multiculturalists have given little attention to the topic of subject matter

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knowledge. James Banks stands out as having written most directly about subject matter
knowledge in multicultural education. He delineates the history of how mainstream
academic knowledge is transformed and how new scholarships in ethnic studies5 help
broaden our understanding about the past and present (Banks, 1992; Banks, 1996) In his
view, teachers need to have a sound knowledge base about the history and culture of
major ethnic groups (Banks, 1994b). Such knowledge should be organized and taught
with key concepts, themes, and issues in the experiences of ethnic and cultural groups.
Those concepts can include something like immigration, culture, ethnic identity and
sense of peoplehood, perspective, ethnic institutions and self-determination, prejudice,
assimilation and acculturation, and knowledge construction (Banks, 1994, p.53).
Although Banks has mentioned in various places these points, he has not elaborated on
the kind and range of subject matter knowledge that he believes teachers should know.
However, through his elaboration on “knowledge construction,” a dimension of
multicultural education that he frequently emphasized, some of his ideas about the
subject matter knowledge in teaching multicultural history are revealed.

Consistent with Schwab, Shulman and others’ belief about teaching the
substantive and syntactic knowledge [Schwab, 1964 #36; Shulman, 1986b #37; Shulman,
1986a #38], or what Ball and McDiarmid (1990) said about “knowledge of’ and
“knowledge about” the subject matter, Banks believes that it is important that teachers
know the substantive knowledge of multicultural history and the epistemological
dimension of history. The former refers to specific content knowledge about the history

and culture of ethnic groups. The latter refers to the nature of knowledge construction—

 

’ They are what Schwab described as substantive and syntactical knowledge (Schwab, 1964).
5 James Banks defined ethnic studies as: The scientific and humanistic study of the histories, cultures, and

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how historians ask questions, informed by their commitments, define evidence, and
interpret events. These two in Banks’ presentations of examples are often intertwined.
For example, in rewriting and teaching the history of the Montgomery Bus Boycott,
Banks employed two autobiographies by women who played key roles in the boycott—
Gibson Robinson and Rosa Parks— to challenge the textbook version that (l) the arrest
of Mrs. Rosa Parks was the cause of the boycott; and (2) Mrs. Parks refused to give up
her seat when asked by the bus driver because she was tired from working hard all day
(Banks, 1996, p.340).

Gibson Robinson was an English professor at Alabama State College and served
as president of the Women’s Political Council (WPC). The WPC has determined that
only a boycott against the bus system would end hostile bus incidents toward Blacks and
bus segregation. It began to plan for a boycott and to wait for the right incident to use to
launch it. Before Rosa Parks, there were two girls who refirsed to give up their seats.
But, WPC wanted someone who was beyond reproach. And, then Rosa Parks refused her
seat and because of her good reputation in the community, that incident was chosen to be
the starting point for a mass boycott.

Banks asked, “Why the work of women like Gibson Robinson and her female
colleagues in the Women’s Political Council remains invisible in most textbooks?” He
would also like to challenge the account that Rosa Park gave up her seat because she was
tired. Most textbooks described it that way. Rosa Park said that she gave up the seat
because she was tired of giving in. These questions hinge upon both the teacher’s
“knowledge of” the event itself from different sources and the “knowledge about” the

interpretive nature of history. Hence, Banks calls teachers to incorporate new scholarship

 

experiences of ethnic groups within the United States and in other societies (Banks, 1994b, p.102).

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in their teaching, particularly scholarship by non-white scholars and women. In teaching
about the West, he encouraged teachers to incorporate works by feminist scholars who
reinterpret the West by finding women’s missing voices (Banks, 1995b).

The kind of subject matter knowledge that is necessary in teaching multicultural
history, therefore, requires teachers to learn history beyond the mainstream political
history and to find the others ignored in the past. Such knowledge base could include
ethnic histories, women’s history, labor history, and social history’s. This does not mean
that they need to know all those histories. Multiculturalists have not defined the range of
knowledge that is necessary for teachers to teach multicultural history well. They may
not be able to do so, just like history educators have not been able to define the
knowledge base for history teachers because of the proliferation of the field. Banks
(1994) has suggested that teachers learn about the history and culture of major ethnic
groups. We do not know yet how teachers’ knowledge in specialized histories would
help them teach U.S. history in a multicultural way, but, it appears in the three teachers’
subject matter knowledge plays an important role in their multicultural history teaching.

Whitney. Whitney offers a particularly important window through which to look
at the role of subject matter in the three teachers’ multicultural teaching. Whitney seems
to have all the “right ingredients” to teach history in a multicultural way: she has the
commitment to teaching multiculturalism; she has a pretty sophisticated, perspectival,
inclusive conception of history compared with many social studies teachers; and, she has
the inclination to teach children using more varied instructional styles. But, her
instruction does not offer students the opportunity to understand more and deeper about

ordinary people. How is this the case? The answer lies in her subject matter knowledge.

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Whitney highlighted feelings that people felt, e.g., how hard life was for
immigrants or how women were treated unequally, but often the big ideas stopped there.
Whitney’s limited subject matter knowledge did not allow her to go deeper into
discussions of more substantive understanding about immigrants’ and women’s various
experiences, and how they relate to racial and gender inequality in society. As a result,
the students still needed to look into the textbook for a narrative of what happened. In
fact, Whitney relies on the textbook to launch her activity. For example, Whitney had
students read the section on building railroads. Then, she played a game with students
like a trivia contest; the group that answered the most questions right won. But, there
was not time for discussing railroad companies, the Chinese workers, or how the
expansion of railroads affect the U.S. Another example that the textbook is the source of
students’ narrative understanding is that she wanted students to read certain pages in the
textbook about “what life was actually like in a sweat shop.” Then she said, “write down
from the perspective of your five senses, what would you have been experiencing?” The
activity did not mean for students to discuss issues, but was more geared toward
encouraging students to imagine the condition and try to make the boring text alive.
However, without real substantive knowledge about immigrant lives, Whitney’s
instructional methods do not seem to guide students to better understanding about labor
and the problems of the time. She does not make the connection between the past and
present.

As a social studies generalist, Whitney had training in social sciences
disciplines—history, sociology, psychology, and political science. However, as she

pointed out, she is no expert in any discipline. Whitney took a women’s history course

 

6 Social history could encompass ethnic histories, women’s history, and labor history (Kessler-Harris, 1990)

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where she obtained a more inclusive conception of history. That course appears to have
been very powerful in influencing her ideas about what traditional history comprises and
what is possible to tell about the past. However, her brief exposure, in a single course,
did not allow her to know the nature of historical work—e.g., how by asking questions
about ordinary women’s lives, historians’ have to look for different ways to collect their
data. When helping students to do research, she thinks about digging out factual
information from encyclopedias. Some of her pedagogy seems to have potential to better
understand women’s and minorities’ felt experiences, such as reading accounts of women
and watching PBS videos on Women’s Suffrage Movement. But Whitney ofi‘ered these
materials without really analyzing them. The articles were read through and the video
was shown; she asked questions to solicit information from the articles and video for
comprehension of information; and then, at the end of the unit she told students in a short
paragraph that all these showed how women struggled to fight for their rights and
freedom just like many minorities did.

Whitney’s disciplinary training seems to be inadequate based on the expectation
Banks lays out. She has not acquired the kind of intellectual skills to identify themes and
issues so that she may help students explore ideas, nor does she have the substantial range
of substantive and syntactical knowledge Banks argues teachers need. Lacking subject
matter knowledge as a result makes her various teaching strategies sufler.

Lance. Both Whitney’s and Lance’s knowledge for history is from their college
courses. What teachers learn in their college seems to stay with them for a long time.
Lance was in college in the 60’s when the civil rights movement came about. The

version of Reconstruction that he is teaching is still the version prior to the 60’s when

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Reconstruction was considered to be a time of corruption and failure of black
government. Blacks were portrayed as vulnerable, ignorant, childlike freedrnen who
were incapable of exercising their political power. Since the 60’s, re-evaluation of
Reconstruction has challenged the old interpretation and began to situate the experience
of Southern blacks in the center of the story. “Current writing on Reconstruction is
informed by a recognition of the extent to which blacks themselves helped shape the
contours of change,” said F oner who wrote a comprehensive recent account of the period
(1990, p.85).

Unlike Whitney, Lance did not receive any training in social history when he was
in college in late 60’s. It was not until the 80’s and 90’s that a wider range of subjects on
racial minorities and women in social science disciplines was offered in the universities
(Thompson & Tyagi, 1993). When thinking about teaching more in-depth about
minority’s perspectives, Lance only wanted to focus on Black-White relationship, rather
than experiences of a range of groups of people. The reason might be that he has not had
the chance to have more disciplined training in ethnic studies or social history.

Howard Zinn, the historian who wrote A People ’s History of the United States
believed that “once teachers begin to look for other perspectives, once they start out on
that road, they will quickly be led from one thing to another to another” (Zinn, 1995,
p.99). He said that the resources are in the library ready for teachers to consult.
However, one of the difficulties of helping teachers to become more multicultural-
oriented is that teachers often have not experienced that kind of teaching. They were not
taught about multicultural history; and teachers in general tend to be influenced by their

observation of apprenticeship (Lortie, 1975). When teachers teach in a homogeneous,

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white community, the pressure from students and the community to incorporate
multicultural contents and concepts may be lighter. States that promote multicultural
education the most are those states that have more diverse populations, such as New York
and California, as shown by their interest in reinventing social studies curriculum
(California State Board of Education, 1988; New York State Education Department,
1991). When Jerry’s more diverse district opened ethnic courses because of students’
and parents’ protest (personal communication with Jerry and another teacher from the
district), Whitney’s and Lance’s districts had not yet required such kind of courses. In
other words, teachers have to be very self-conscious to take initiative to teach
multicultural history in those districts. Neither Lance nor Whitney are expected to teach
multicultural history in the school. Their district guidelines do not include the objective,
nor their colleagues engage in multicultural curriculum. Lance said that compared with
his colleagues, he is more critical of issues of racism and cares more for cultural issues in
the school.

Without interaction with others or outside intervention, like exposure to ethnic
studies, teachers have difficulty conceptualizing what sort of knowledge they need to
explore more about other stories. Subject matter exposure to ethnic studies, women’s
study and social history appears to be highly pertinent in teachers’ teaching of
multicultural history. But Lance’s case, of a teacher already going beyond the
expectations of the school and community and in some way taking risks in even
broaching multiculturalism, reminds us that there is much that stands between teacher
commitment and the kinds of knowledge reformers espouse.

Jerry. Like Lance, Jerry took survey U.S. history courses in college. But, unlike

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Lance, who took primarily U.S. history and European history courses, Jerry took some
courses outside of Europe and U.S.—e.g., African history and Mexican Revolution. But,
according to Jerry’s report, college courses did not seem to affect him in terms of
providing connections. College to him was “a bunch of facts, relevant explanation, and it
was all.” “I think there was little means of trying to help me connect it,” said Jerry. Jerry
just finished his master’s in Humanities in a master’s program focusing on U.S. History.
In his view, “it was literally just the same aspect.”

However, Jerry does seem to know more about the interpretive nature of history.
When he reflected upon his experience of reading formal slave narratives conducted
under the Writers’ Project during the New Deal, he pointed out that who the interviewers
are affect what the narrative would be. When the interviewers were whites, former slaves
would not reveal their thoughts as much as they would with black interviewers. Jerry
also pointed out how that happened to him when he later interviewed relatives of formal
slaves. He concluded that based on who’s doing an interview with a certain person, there
will be variations. Then, the researcher will have to look for what he called
“supplements” to “fill in certain gaps,” and then come to a conclusion. Jerry came away
from the research feeling that “you are bringing something else into somebody else’s
story to either verify and not verify or substantiate one way or the other.” “So, to a
degree, it changes the outcome,” he said.

Asked how his research experiences influenced him, Jerry said that it had a
“conclusive” effect on him that he will try to pass on to students the notion that “history
cannot be taken as verbatim.” Jerry’s understanding about the nature of the subject

matter seems to have an efiect on his awareness of different perspectives and the way he

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looks at textbook accounts.

In terms of substantive knowledge about different ethnic groups and its effect on
teachers, Jerry acknowledged that he does not know enough about Hispanic, Asian, and
Native American history to teach about those groups’ experiences. Although Jerry has
taken courses in Afiican Studies and Mexican Revolution, Jerry’s academic background
is grounded in the political account of U.S. history. He said, “I don’t know a lot about
Native Americans and I am a social studies teacher. I am now becoming more infused in
the Asian culture. I am a social studies teacher. I am now learning about Hispanic. There
is much more in need. So, to me as a vessel, 1 am very empty to be able to fill the other
containers as I pour. That needs to change.”

Jerry’s subject matter training may allow him to be conscious about the value-
laden nature of history, but substantively, his lack of substantive knowledge in the history
and culture of ethnic groups limits his cuniculum. And Jerry is aware of that. If Lance
shows us that even well-intentioned teachers may be unaware of their subject matter
knowledge limitations, Jerry reminds us that it is very difficult for busy teachers to gain
the combination of understandings and knowledge that they may even desire.

Analysis. It seems that teachers’ subject matter preparation does play a role in
their teaching (Ball & McDiarmid, 1990). However, exactly what sort of knowledge that
is necessary to teach multicultural history remains unclear. In each teacher’s practice,
their subject matter knowledge preparation seems to leave marks—e.g., Whitney’s choice
of multicultural curricular, Lance’s Reconstruction account, and Jerry’s taking the
textbook as an interpretation rather than the truth. Their lack of subject matter

knowledge also leaves something to be desired in their multicultural history teaching—

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that is, that they are able to engage students in more substantive discussions about
different groups of people’s experiences.

The teachers’ formal education seems to have a fundamental influence on
teachers’ multicultural history teaching. This may shed light on how to prepare future
teachers for multicultural education. More ethnic studies and social history can be
required for prospective history teachers. Still, researchers need to work on having better
understanding about the substantive (knowledge of) and syntactical (knowledge about)

knowledge that is necessary for multicultural history teaching.

Girls for Teaching History

What orients teachers’ practices is not only their conceptions of history,
understanding about teaching and learning, or subject matter, but also their goals for
teaching history.

Lance. The purpose of teaching high school history in Lance’s view is to teach
students to understand what America stands for constitutionally, the democratic
principles, the practices of democracy, policies and effectiveness of leaders.

Many of Lance’s goals resemble the cultural transmission tradition in social

studies approaches7 (Barr et al., 1977; Brubaker et al., 1977; J anzen, 1995; Martorella,

 

7 In Barr, Barth, and Shermis’ (1977) study, teachers’ orientations toward social studies education contain
specific purposes, contents and methods. Social studies educators have been trying to understand what the
purposes of social studies education are in an attempt to help clarify what are important for students to
learn and how to teach them. They found that the goal for social studies is to turn out “good citizens.”
However, what good citizenship is and how to approach it have never been clear constructs. Despite the
lack of consensus in the field, researchers still find some approaches that are generally adopted by
classroom teachers (Anderson, Avery, Pederson, Smith, & Sullivan, 1997; Brubaker etal., 1977; Clark &
Case, 1997; Janzen, 1995; Martorella, 1996). Most of these works have been drawing upon Barr, Barth and
Shermis’ typologies (1977): social studies as citizenship transmission, social studies as social sciences, and
social studies as reflective inquiry. Social studies as citizenship transmission is an approach that views the
primary purposes of social studies as inculcating students with fimdarnental knowledge, values, and skills

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1996). Social studies as citizenship transmission is an approach that views the primary
purposes of social studies as inculcating students with fimdamental knowledge, values,
and skills to be responsible citizens. Lance’s primary goal is to build up the foundational
knowledge for students, including mainstream chronology, major political and military
events and important leaders in U.S. According to the cultural transmissions approach,
students are exposed to democratic principles in order to come to accept them and act
upon them as tenets. Teachers who hold this view believe that students must be exposed
to a common body of knowledge—certain ideas, persons, events, and facts that all
Americans need to know in order to share a sense of commonality.

To Lance, multiculturalism means a commitment to democratic principles. But,
his vision for a democratic society does not rest on teaching unique cultures and histories
of ethnic minorities, but is enacted through raising issues of racism as a problem in
society. Studying histories of diverse groups of people in depth pulls him away from a
coherent political chronology and narrative that he sets out to tell. Through discussing
civil rights issues during certain historical events, e.g., Indian policy, Reconstruction, and
civil rights movements, Lance teaches students about ideas of racism and democratic
principles. By not going deeper into alternative perspectives and interpretations, Lance is

then able to maintain a coherent narrative of U.S. history.

 

to be responsible citizens. Social studies as social sciences is an approach that stresses social sciences’
disciplinary way of thinking. Reflective inquiry encourages value analysis and decision-making through
exploring problems and issues in society.

Other alternative conceptualizations have been attempted. Martorella (1996) adds personal
development and informed social criticism to the three traditions. Brubaker et a1. (1977) reconceptualized
the categories and made them into five approaches that are in nature similar to Barr, Barth and Shermis’:
(1) social studies as knowledge of the past as a guide to good citizenship, (2) social studies in the student-
centered tradition, (3) social studies as reflective inquiry, (4) social studies as structure of the disciplines,
and (5) social studies as socio-political involvement.

8 I use cultural transmission (Janzen, 1995) and citizenship transmission (Barr et al., 1977) interchangeably

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The tradeoff of a cultural transmission approach is that students get a coherent
narrative of U.S. history, but lose opportunities to understand that history is more than
one coherent narrative, and that there are multiple stories in the U.S. past. Their
understanding about other ethnic groups would be a lot thinner than people who really
explore alternatives perspectives. However, they will have what many people consider to
be important mainstream knowledge. They will have a strong sense of coherence and
chronology, which is also important in developing historical literacy (Baker, 1995). I
discuss the narrative problem that is under-explored in multicultural theories later in this
chapter.

Whitney. J anzen (1995) pointed out that although many educators hesitate to
commit themselves publicly to the cultural transmission approach, one can find that
behind the closed doors of social studies classrooms, teachers adhere to this approach
much of the time. In many teachers’ explicit or implicit views, cultural transmission is
important. In addition, teachers often hold more than one approach in teaching social
studies (Bennett, 1980; White, 1982). In Whimey’s case, she appears to hold both
cultural transmission and multiculturalism approaches. In the meantime, her goal to
make the lesson interesting often outweighs all her other purposes.

There seem to be two purposes of history teaching to Whitney. One is the
purpose to give students “a general knowledge of what things that have happened in this
country over the last couple of hundred years.” By general knowledge she means that
“we’ve been involved in wars, and we had a Civil War and we denied certain groups,
their rights over time, and there have been times of economic prosperity and times of

poverty.” This means that she still teaches students about the wars that the U.S. involved

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in, even though her personal interest is not in wars and foreign affairs. In her view, it is
her responsibility to teach mainstream topics taking a cultural transmission approach.

At the same time, she holds a view that she should teach the “general patterns,”
like “people experience different things.” “I do want them to know that a lot of people
have a lot of diflerent experiences, but I also want them to see some of the injustices.
And, that impact of those injustices, so hopefully as they become the leaders tomorrow,
they don’t repeat some of those same mistakes,” said Whitney. Whitney would like
students to have the general idea that people did not experience the past the same way.
Whitney’s purpose of history teaching may not appear to be very different from Lance,
who wanted students to be able to have the conception of civil rights. The difl‘erence lies
in her emphasis on “different experiences,” which leads to her selection of her
supplementary materials and social history topics.

Her multicultural approach, however, is tinted by yet another goal, to make
lessons interesting as a top priority. Often Whitney’s concern for engaging students in
activities outweighs her commitment to teaching the subject matter. “It’s so important to
me to have a variety of activities,” Whitney claimed. It’s such a powerful way of
thinking that she said sometimes she will “go past” the thought of what she would like
students to know and think in terms of what activities they need. Her rationale goes like,
“we’ve been having a lot of whole-class discussions lately, I think we need to break that
up a little bit, I think it’s time for group activities, or it’s time for them to work alone.”
So, “sometimes I just decide, we need variety, they need to be doing different things to
stay interested, what haven’t we done in a while and do that,” Whitney said in explaining

the way she goes about designing a lesson.

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This dominant thought mediates her teaching multicultural history. On the one
hand, Whitney tries to incorporate multicultural materials, e. g., articles about women’s
experiences and facts about Black soldiers in WWII. On the other, she is heavily
influenced by her goal to make her class interesting. Projects like doing art work
describing immigrant experiences, or doing a classified ad about immigrants’ work in the
U.S., are her ways to make history fun. Whitney’s attention to pedagogy is both her
strength and her weakness. Her significant lack of attention to going deeply into the
subject matter unfortunately makes it hard for her students to experience different
perspectives deeply.

Jerry. Like Lance and Whitney, part of Jerry’s purpose for teaching U.S. history
is to transmit cultural knowledge, or the dominant academic knowledge that will ensure
his students’ survival in society. The way he addresses multicultural history is not by
teaching students different groups of people’s experiences, but by “digressing” from the
mainstream U.S. history to a certain limit. In his view, a teacher does not have much
choice for their desirable topics. Jerry said, “the choice doesn’t lie in the topics,
unfortunately. The choice lies in the length and the duration of time that you spent
exploring a topic because within the district, you have a given guideline that you’ve got
to [adhere to].” There is a chronological core curriculum that the district designed for
teachers to follow which makes Jerry decide that he can only deviate his curriculum to
some extent.

Jerry’s goal is to do what is best for his students. Asked what he thinks the
interest for his students is, Jerry answered, “prepare them for the rudiments that the state,

the local school body has mandated as they prepare for. So, that when they face the SAT,

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the ACT, the HSPT, and all those fundamental evaluation method that they are adequately
prepared to move on to the other step.” This explains that although I observed Jerry
critiquing textbook accounts in class, when I looked at the exam he gave students, it
tested students’ factual knowledge about mainstream history. Jerry said that at least fifty
questions out of his sixty-six questions should be questions that students of even different
high schools should be able to answer.

Multiculturalism really is not the most single important thing in his class. The
goal to prepare students for outside assessments competes with his desire to teach
multicultural history, or in his term “cultural studies” more. “I can’t focus on all these
sub-topics that I think students need to know. . .. I can only digress to certain limits,” said
Jerry. The compromise is that he opts for covering the textbook account, and when
possible, he critiques biases embedded in it.

Lisa Delpit’s article The Silenced Dialogue (1988) argued the same point that
Jerry’s trying to make. Teachers of children of color and children of poor often argue that
their students must be taught explicitly the codes needed to participate fully in the
mainstream U.S. society. Delpit was not trying to argue that children who come to school
with little mainstream cultural literacy should receive less adventurous form of
instruction. However, she believes that teachers, parents and students of poor
communities must participate in deciding what instruction is in their children’s best
interest. Jerry has made the decision that it is in his students’ best interest to teach the
way he does.

Analysis. It seems that all three teachers adopt a cultural transmission approach

that they may not like to claim that they are committed to it (J anzen, 1995). They do so

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for different reasons. Their multicultural approaches are often compromised by their
various commitments. Teachers’ goals for history teaching inevitably shape their
teaching. For Lance, his commitment to multiculturalism is within the story of
mainstream thoughts about achieving citizenship education—teaching democratic
concepts, but not putting perspectives of ethnic minorities at the center of the story or
viewing them as agents for social change. Whitney’s emphasis on making history fun
through pedagogy influences her multicultural teaching more than other factors. And, to
Jerry, the commitment is yet another one—the concerns for his students’ academic
excellence and successful future in mainstream society.

Research indicates the importance of making the goals of multicultural education
clear to pre-service social studies teachers when many of them have misconceptions of
multicultural concepts and what the goals of multicultural education are (Fry, 1995).
Research however has not addressed the issue of teachers’ multiple and often conflicting
commitments in multicultural education. Clearly, if debates about multicultural
education will be beneficial to the discourse, we need to shift to include attention to more
practical issues like the conflict between transmitting important mainstream knowledge
and teaching authentic multicultural history (Lance), or the conflict between teaching
multicultural curriculum that students are not going to be tested on and teaching students
for standardized exams for success (Jerry). Needless to say, we do not know very well
how to prepare teachers to teach multicultural history so that they would employ

appropriate pedagogy with sufficient knowledge in multicultural history (Whitney).

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Why The Additive Apgroach?

Using Banks’ four levels of multicultural education (1994), neither Lance,
Whitney or Jerry uses the first level, the contributions approach, which focuses on
teaching heroes, holidays, and discrete cultural elements. They all tend to employ the
second level, the additive approach, which adds multicultural contents, concepts, themes,
and even perspectives without changing the structure of the cuniculum. The third level,
the transformative approach, as Banks theorized, should have a changed structure of
curriculum that enables students to view concepts, issues, events, and themes from the
perspective of diverse ethnic and cultural groups. Based on the knowledge gained in the
third level, in the fourth level, social action approach, students make decisions on
important social issues and take actions to help solve them.

Anderson et a1. (1997) reported that their research reflected the national debate
about the degree to which different ethnic experiences and perspectives should be
integrated into the history curriculum. Their research demonstrates polarized views
toward citizenship education with the cultural pluralists and the assimilationists on the
opposite ends of a spectrum. In between, there is a critical thinking perspective that is
more supportive of multicultural education, and a legalism perspective that is more
neutral toward the issue. The authors argued that in an era of school reform, social
studies teachers’ difiefing perspectives on the role of diversity in citizenship education
will often collide. Social studies education remains to be the most contested school
subject.

My research shows that even individual teachers who claim to be multicultural-

minded hold differing commitments toward social studies and citizenship education.

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These three teachers hold both an assimilationist view (citizenship transmission) and a
cultural pluralist (multiculturalism) view toward social studies education. They adopt an
additive approach rather than a transformative approach to multicultural history teaching
for various reasons. One of the reasons is that their multicultural subject matter
knowledge, beliefs about teaching and learning, and goals do not support them to teach
multicultural history in an integrative way. Like Jerry, they try to meet the needs of the
existing curriculum and standards along with their commitment to multicultural
education. Or, Like Lance, they themselves are products of the existing system and really
are not prepared to change the structure of the curriculum. Or, as in Whitney’s case, they
do not know how to go about teaching multicultural history because they lack subject
matter knowledge.

Across the three cases, it appears that conceptions of history affect history
teaching. However, unlike Evan’s (1989) claim that there is congruence in a teacher’s
conception of history and his/her approach to teaching, my study indicates that this might
not be the case. Conceptions of history do not indicate the kind of approaches the
teachers will take, particularly in Whitney’s and Jerry’s cases. Their conceptions of
history as perspective-taking do not lead to their teaching multicultural history through
inquiry. It seems that in the three teachers’ cases, beliefs about teaching and learning
have more to do with their approaches to teaching than their conceptions of history do.
Lance’s and Jerry’s beliefs about teaching and leaming render their teaching teacher-
centered and lecture-based or textbook-based. Whitney’s beliefs about teaching and
learning make her decide what teaching strategies to use.

Subject matter knowledge appears to be central to teaching history in an authentic

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rat

wi1

rather than additive way. Multicultural history teaching requires that teachers be familiar
with the history of major ethnic and cultural groups. But, we do not know yet whether
and exactly what subject matter knowledge will bring good multicultural history
teaching.

Finally, goals for history teaching are complex. Teachers do not merely commit
to teaching about diversity. There are competing goals that teachers commit themselves
to, goals that they consider to be most beneficial to their students. Hence, overall,
multicultural history is not an organizing concept in these teachers’ curriculum and
instruction. It may have been one of the instructional ideas and curricular goals, but, it is
not one that orients instruction. For these three teachers, the additive approach to respond
to reformers’ call for teaching history in a multicultural way is the most sensible way.

This is a sobering finding. A reader steeped in multicultural theory may be quick
to dismiss the additive approach. But when we put real faces on teachers who quite
consciously adhere to this orientation—each for a different constellation of reasons—and
we see the real practices they enact, which also look very dissimilar to one another and
each oflers some real strengths, it encourages us to think harder about the power (and
appeal) of this approach. What it does offer has not been carefully investigated. And
why it is so hard to abandon needs further study. Below I consider two major challenges

these cases raise.

Challenges for Multicultural History Teaching
I asked Jerry, “Do you think that addressing multicultural issues in the context of

U.S. History is possible?” “It will come to that, but no time soon. Why? Because they

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have to rewrite it. And, you’re gonna have people who are gonna disagree on what to
write,” Jerry answered. Jerry spelled out the two structural irnpasses in multicultural
history in schools. What else makes multicultural history difficult to teach? Aside from
individual teachers’ subjective factors, which I analyze above, there are external factors
that are central to teachers’ additive approach to multicultural teaching. Two major
problems seem to emerge from this study: (1) the unresolved narrative problem posed by
social history in synthesizing a new U.S. history, and (2) the institutional constraints such
as standardized exams and textbook writing. These two are related issues concerning
people’s visions for society, or one could say, their visions for the past and present.
These two problems contribute to teachers’ additive approaches. The teachers’ dual
goals to transmit mainstream cultural knowledge and teaching students about alternative
views and perspectives are rooted in problems that exist in the history discipline and
public politics. Ifthe situation continues, the additive approach will likely remain the

major approach teachers adopt to teach multicultural history.

The Narrative Problem
I found that there is a narrative text in each of the teacher’s classroom. Lance’s
class is the most distinctive one that basically tells what Foner (1990) called, “the old
presidential synthesis.” His was a narrative that understood the evolution of American
society chiefly via presidential elections and administrations (see Appendix F). Jerry’s
curriculum also follows this line of narrative despite his grievances over the lack of other
perspectives in the textbook (see Appendix H). Whitney’s curriculum includes more

social history topics (see Appendix G), but her narrative is the old theme of “progress”

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and democracy—how women fight for their rights to vote, or how the West forms the
uniqueness of American individualistic trait. In helping students understand the plight of
the immigrants, Whitney focused on getting students to imagine the hardships of
immigrants. The assumption in her class is that students will read their textbook to get
the story. Whitney relied on the textbook for students to get the narrative.

Narrative is an important way for humans to make sense of their world (Bruner,
1986). Historians also see the bringing together of many elements of parts into a
synthetic and interpretive whole the essence of historical work (Bender, 1986; Mink,
1987). Textbook accounts in this sense are providing usable explanations for the teachers
and their students.

It is precisely because textbooks play key roles in most history classrooms
(Goldstein, 1978; Shaver, Davis, & Helburn, 1980) that we need to be thoughtful about
the issue of narrative in teaching multicultural history. If textbooks had been rewritten to
include diverse groups in the narrative, the story that teachers rely upon would be
different. It does not necessarily mean that they would teach history better, because if
they still teach history as a collection of facts, a more inclusive history would still stifle
learning. However, it does mean that teachers would be in a more legitimate position to
teach about different groups. They would also have a narrative or resource that is ready
for them to fall back on.

If we do not have such a new synthesis, would most teachers be able to help
students synthesize an alternative story? Neither Lance, Whitney or Jerry, despite their
many strengths, help students get deeper understanding about ethnic experiences or

women’s stories. Jerry may point out how the cotton gin was viewed as an invention

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from hell; he did not give students a more contextual understanding about slaves and the
Industrial Revolution. He may point out the general idea that the U.S. is a diverse
country, but students did not get to know any of the ethnic groups more than the textbook
says. Teachers might be able to help students construct their own understandings about
events if they hold a constructivist belief about teaching and learning and if their
knowledge about ethnic histories and other social histories could be enhanced.

But the majority of U.S. teachers are not well prepared to teach students to
investigate history critically; most social studies teachers still rely on their textbooks
(Goldstein, 1978; Goodlad, 1984; Shaver et al., 1980). Lance, Whitney and Jerry cannot
become competent multicultural history teachers just because they would like to respond
to multiculturalism. Most teachers need a narrative structure to help them teach
multicultural history so that ethnic experiences are not just add-ons. Such a synthesis
would be important for our sense-making of the past that includes major groups of
people’s experiences. Works like Takaki’s A Larger Memory (1998) contain a collection
of first hand accounts of people’s diaries and oral history, but do not tell us a coherent
story about all the different experiences. A history reader wants an explanation, a story
that connects all the pieces together. These teachers argued that this need is especially
true for high school students.

Although this study hinted that a constructivist approach toward teaching and in-
depth multicultural subject matter knowledge can help the teacher, I also came to believe
that teachers need a coherent multicultural narrative since many of them hold the cultural
transmission perspective toward history teaching. If the old narrative structure does not

change, most teachers still will teach it and use it as the major source of historical

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knowledge most of the time. This does not mean that teachers should use the new
synthesis as the Truth. Efforts to educate teachers to view history as interpretation that
needs to be revised and rewritten every generation still need to continue. But, newer
synthesis needs to be in place in order that teachers and the public can make sense of the
world differently. The challenges Lance, Whitney and Jerry face point out the unresolved
narrative problem of the field. We do not yet have such a synthesis.

U.S. historians have been calling for writing a new synthesis or master narrative
of U.S. history, but no one has attempted the endeavor (Bender, 1986; Higham, 1994), not
only because writing a national history is a daunting task, but writing it in an era of
knowledge proliferation is problematic, if not impossible. Historians are excited about
the detailed and insiders’ accounts about past ignored groups in society, but they face an
enormous task to try to include all the different experiences under the umbrella of a
nation’s history. Thomas Bender (1986) and John Higham (1994) believe that nation-
state is still an organizing structure and that historians bear the civic responsibility to
communicate to the public their interpretations of how their society and nation works.
Both historians have tried to identify the center or centers to help synthesize a narrative

”9. However, the task is waiting to be done.

with the “peripheral parts” or “margins
The narrative problem does not enjoy consensus among historians. Although
many historians would like to have a new synthesis, some historians, often social

historians, do not believe that it’s necessary to write a master narrative. They warn that

the calls for synthesis are attempts to impose one interpretation on others (Megill, 1991).

 

9 Thomas Bender (1986) suggested using the notion of “public culture” and its making as the center of the
narrative, which will relate to its peripheral parts. Bender called for a synthesis that begins “tacking” the
center and the peripheral parts by developing an interpretive understanding of how American society
works. Higham (1994) identified three centers: the state, the economy, and the culture.

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They wonder who’s going to define what the centers are? Whose values are upheld in the
narrative? Any narrative is going to be about someone’s value, therefore, it is
particularly hard to write in a postmodern era. Still, there are social historians who say
that having a new synthesis is a goal and that consensus among social historians about
their commonality is forming (Foner, 1990; Kessler-Harris, 1990). Multicultural theorist
James Banks (1993) has called for teaching a more inclusive history, but he has not called
for rewriting history. Instead, he proposed to teach mainstream academic history and
transformative knowledge at the same time, perhaps due to the reality of lacking an
inclusive narrative in the field of history. David Kobrin (1992) does not believe that
narrative history is the answer to multicultural history teaching. He believes that history
workshops and educating student historians is the answer to history education in a diverse
society. James Loewen (1995) who authored Lies my Teacher Told Me found himself
tongue-tied when people asked him what textbook he would recommend after he
critiqued twelve U.S. history textbooks. The textbooks’ omniscient voice avoids
conflicts and controversies. Instead of calling for a new master narrative, Loewen made
recommendations to teachers to intervene in the cycle of textbook boards, publishers,
authors, students and the public by, for example, teaching fewer topics and examining
them more thoroughly (Loewen, 1995).

All these different Opinions point out how multicultural history or social history
poses problems for writing and teaching a new national narrative. The field of history
discipline is still in the process of “consolidation and difl‘erentiation” (Higham, 1994).
Historians have not yet come to a consensus about what to write about in a new U.S.

history. It becomes then a challenge for multicultural history teachers to decide what to

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include in their curriculum. A master narrative will help define what cultural knowledge
schools need to impart in students. It might stifle learning and skew toward a set of
beliefs and ideologies, if taught as rote memorization. But, without having a new
synthesis that integrates different groups of people’s experiences in telling the U.S.
history, most teachers are likely to teach multicultural history through an additive
approach, because they would have to meet the demands of what the textbook defines as
cultural literacy, which tends to be Eurocentric.

The field of history has not helped multicultural history to be firmly in the
classroom. To aggravate the situation, multicultural history teaching is hard to get into

the classroom because of institutional constraints.

The Problem of Institutional Constraints

Jerry voiced the dilemma that multicultural history teachers face in their daily
life—whether they should teach what they believe to be the purpose of the subject matter,
or whether they should teach what is beneficial to students’ success in society. Jerry
pointed out that outside assessments like the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the
American College Testing Program (ACT) will not measure students’ multicultural
knowledge. He can only address “cultural aspects” of U.S. history to some extent, not to
the detriment of students’ interests. Whitney also expressed that she is concerned if the
planned implementation of the state’s High School Proficiency Test in social studies in
1999 would affect her history teaching. She was sure that exams drive curriculum and
instruction, and she will have to adapt to the test requirements. Lance is least concerned

about outside assessment, perhaps because he is already teaching the most acceptable

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version of history to students. He regularly gave quizzes and tests in class, so he does not
think that he would worry about standardized tests.

Jerry recognized that mainstream history is the privileged knowledge. In order
for his students to succeed in various standardized tests, he believed that he should teach
what the textbook covers. It may appear that multicultural education is being introduced
across the country. But, in effect, multicultural curriculum and instruction remain to be
exposed to only a minority of students. Gollnick’s (1995) report, National and State
Initiatives for Multicultural Education revealed that the federal and state education laws
continued to be concerned with providing equal opportunities for cultural and ethnic
minorities rather than preparing all students to know about and function effectively in a
diverse society. “Seldom was it expected that existing curriculum and school and
classroom practices should actually be reformed to reflect cultural diversity” (p.62).
Gollnick said that the application of multicultural education requirements in teacher
education and schools was often handled by adding a course on multicultural education
or inserting units in existing courses. For example, Jerry was teaching an Afro-American
history class as a district mandate. His curriculum in that class was more from African
American perspectives. But, in his U.S. History class, his focus will be from the
“nation’s” point of view because multiculturalists have not won the debate about what it
means to teach U.S. history.

Two lines of arguments make the implementation of serious multicultural history
education in public schools difficult. One is the argument about students’ failed
academic performance (Ravitch & F inn, 1987). The other defines multiculturalism as

ethnocentrism (e.g., Afrocentrism) and warns the public of balkanization if multicultural

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history is taught in schools (Combleth & Waugh, 1995).

Ravitch and Finn’s (1987) What Do Our [7-Year-Olds Know? and, E. D. Hirsch’s
(1988) Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know effectively stirred the
public’s emotional reaction toward students’ lack of knowledge in the American heritage
that is based on Western Civilization. They made the case that nearly one-half of the
American high school students cannot identify who Oedipus was or what Achilles’ heel
means or who said “Ask not what your country can do for you.” Many of them do not
have the “cultural literacy” that is considered by them necessary for a cohesive country.
Lynne V. Cheney, the former chairperson of the National Endowment for the Humanities,
released in 1991 a report, National Tests: What Other Countries Expect Their Students to
Know, called for national tests that ensure students’ acquirement of important factual
knowledge as well as their ability to use it. These people create an image to the public
that the American social studies have been watered down and there is a crisis of students’
lacking knowledge of their “heritage.” Hence, their sense of unum is at risk. What these
critics then promote is national exams that would ensure that all students share some
important common knowledge.

During the same time of the heightened concem for students’ lack of knowledge
in American heritage, California and New York state were undergoing reforms in their
social studies curriculum to make them more multicultural. Ravitch and Cheney
promoted California’s 1987 history-social science framework (History-Social Science
Curriculum Framework and Criteria Committee, 1988), which Combleth and Waugh
(1995) critiqued as a “happy brand of multiculturalism that cast everyone into the same

immigrant mold” and as a way to generalize all ethnic groups’ experiences.

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About the same time, in 1987, New York appointed a Task Force on Minorities
which produced a hotly debated report, A Curriculum of Inclusion (Task Force on
Minorities, 1989). Ravitch and Schlesinger were actively involved in the process of
policy-making and argued that in the name of multiculturalism, ethnocentric
“particularists” were undermining the U.S. national culture, sacrificing “unum” in the
name of “pluribus.” They then rhetorically branded multiculturalists as “separatists” that
encourage “etlmic cheerleading” and promoting “social and psychological therapy”
instead of teaching history (Ravitch, 1991; Ravitch & Arthur Schlesinger, 1990).
Combleth and Waugh (1995) documented the policy-making process of both California
and New York social studies frameworks, and underlined the influence of Ravitch and
Schlesinger’s representation of multicultural social studies and how it kept serious
multicultural social studies at bay.

Associated with the debates generated by that two states’ social studies
frameworks was another round of cultural war triggered by the development of the
National Standards for United States History (1994). This is a history curriculum
framework developed by the National Center for History in the Schools at the University
of California at Los Angeles, directed by Charlotte Crabtree and Gary Nash, who also co-
authored California’s adopted social studies series in 1990. The framework maintained
the basic chronological structure of the traditional narrative (i.e., Three Worlds Meet,
Colonization and Settlement, Revolution and the New Nation, Expansion and Reform,
Civil War and Reconstruction, The Development of the Industrial United States, The
Emergence of Modern America, The Great Depression and World War H, Postwar United

States, Contemporary United States). The standards emphasize the importance of

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historical thinking. And, in each era, there are suggestions made for teachers to choose
their interested issues. Although the majority of the issues are still based on Western
Civilization, there are opportunities for teachers to choose to examine multiple
perspectives, such as “analyzing Native American involvement in the colonial wars and
evaluating the consequences for their societies.” Even this kind of analysis was criticized
by opponents as expressing “elitist guilt.”

Bob Dole said in a speech at a convention of the American Legion in Indianapolis
that English must be recognized as America's official language, and that America's
greatness, rather than its guilt, should be taught in the schools (from The Economist, Sept
9, 1995). Dole denounced the standards as "elitist guilt over a culture built on the
traditions of the West." Other critiques of the standards include " anti-Americanism,"
"political correctness" and "biases." The furor reached a peak on January 18, 1996, when
the U.S. Senate passed a resolution expressing its disapproval of the standards by a 99-to-
1 vote. Senators complained that the standards disparaged Western Civilization and
neglected major figures in American history; and that the standards dwell upon minority
personages at the expense of dead white males. The general lack of appreciation for new
scholarship and understanding about what we did not know was prevalent and powerfirl.

It is in the context of such public discourse that the teachers are trying to teach
their subject matter. Publishers will not provide textbooks that reflect the diversity of
society unless the politics of knowledge is less contentious. Likewise, assessments will
remain more or less similar to the traditional one unless new school knowledge is
produced and widely recognized. Jerry commented that unless he sees ethnic minorities

and women and the silenced represented in those tests and the textbooks, he does not

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think that he could teach history as “cultural studies” the way he wanted it.
These cases remind us of the difficulty of promoting teacher change without
taking into account the context in which that reform exists. For multicultural history

teachers, theirs is a context fraught with tasks and sometimes conflicting demands.

Synthesizing Multicultural History Teaching

Given the disadvantages created by the social norms and organizational
constraints, teachers are still believed to be the change agents who will help shape the
quality of education that students receive. Scholars who study reforms find teachers do
make changes (Cuban, 1993; Grant & Sleeter, 1985). Teachers’ beliefs about what it
means to teach their subject matter to their students make a difference to their practice
(Cuban, 1993). The three teachers illuminate some aspects of multicultural history
practices that are helpful for us to think about some ideas about the practice of it.

Persistent and shared by the three teachers’ approaches to teaching multicultural
history is the problem that the concepts and perspectives that they try to bring out are not
in-depth. Given the incoherence in the field of history, what should be the yardstick for
teaching history in a multicultural way? It appears that some “old” claims that are made
by social studies/history educators remain pivotal. They are the arguments of “depth over
breadth,” (Brophy, Alleman, & O'Mahony, in press; Loewen, 1995; Newmann, 1988),
“content and process,” (Brophy et al., in press; Stearns, 1991) and “teaching controversy”
(Karras, 1996; Kelly, 1986; Loewen, 1995). Another set of principles that are pertaining
to multiculturalism is “centrality,” ‘yoice,” and “human agency” (Singer, 1993; Swartz &

Goodwin, 1992; Wills &' Mehan, 1996a). These two sets of principles may not resolve

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the conflict between transmitting mainstream knowledge and teaching multicultural
history authentically, but they could be yardsticks for those who would like to try to teach

multicultural history in an authentic way.

Centrality, Voice, and Human Ageggy

Whitney and Jerry talked about perspectives. However, they had not really
developed perspectives in class. Whitney took perspectives for granted, assuming that by
teaching students feelings about immigrants and showing information about women, she
was teaching perspectives. Without making explicit what perspectives she was teaching
and how that perspective differred from another one (e.g., mainstream perspective),
perspectives were hidden in her materials. Jerry mentioned perspectives and even
explained the difference between the textbook’s perspective and his; yet students did not
have any contents or alternative information to think about the new perspective.

Developing perspectives in multicultural history means that the marginalized
groups are put in the “center.” Events are seen from their standpoint. It involves viewing
the silenced groups as “agents” whose “voices” want to be heard. Critiques on
multicultural teaching or textbooks sometimes are not about what materials are included,
but how the materials are included. Many textbooks contain information about women,
workers, and ethnic minorities; however, the tone suggests that the perspective is not
from the individual’s or groups’ perspectives. Swartz and Goodwin’s (1992) analysis of

99 6‘

textbook accounts pointed out how the disadvantaged groups’ “voices, perspectives,”
and “authentic accounts” are omitted or submerged in textbooks. They argued that

“being there” in the textbooks does not ensure the “centrality” and accurate

235

representation of the people. An example is how the textbook described Crispus Attucks.
Crispus Attucks was a runaway slave who worked on the docks in Boston. He
was about 50 years old when he was killed in the Boston Massacre. (America
Will Be, p.250)

Swartz and Goodwin analyzed:
Even in his freedom, Attucks is defined foremost as a slave—a rtmaway
slave—even though he liberated himself from slavery in 1750, twenty years
before the Boston Massacre. How long does one need to be free, to be free in
the land of textbook history? The prior enslavement of Attucks and its
significance could be stated in a way that draws the connection between his
personal experiences to achieve human freedom and his efi‘orts as the leader
of colonial rebels charging up King street to confront British soldiers. (1992,
p.47)

When teaching about individuals or groups people who are non-white and non-
elite, if efions are not paid to delve into “details” in relation to the individual or groups,
perspectives and accounts tend to be submerged in the mainstream narrative. To show
that Crispus Attucks is not merely one of the five people killed in Boston Massacre, but
an agent of change, more contextual knowledge has to be known about him. To
understand perspectives is to see things from the players’ views and experiences.

When teaching about the experiences of minorities, it is easy to talk about
minorities’ plights as a generalized concept without delving into details and their
perspectives. Two things tend to be done by this general approach. One is to ignore the
“human agency” of minorities. Another is to perceive minorities as victims without
discussing the mechanisms of oppression and discrimination. Both of these tendencies
were present in the classes I observed.

The perception that ordinary people take active part in shaping their lives

influences the way historians research their topics. No longer are women, the poor, and

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ethnic groups perceived as voiceless persons and having no roles in influencing society.
They are viewed as “agents” of change. Or, their experiences are part of the big story
that once included will change the interpretation of it. When the Women’s Political
Council’s role in planning the Montgomery bus boycott was revealed, it changed the
account of the role women and blacks play in the civil rights movement. It was not the
powerful political leaders who passed laws to make changes; it was those ordinary men
and women and minorities who strove to make change in an unequal society.

Minorities are discriminated against and it is important that children learn about
discrimination, the plight of the people, and oppression. However, it is crucial that the
mechanisms of oppression and discrimination are discussed rather than giving a general
claim, which makes it hard for learners to imagine minorities’ experiences and how they
might perceive things (Swartz & Goodwin, 1992). Lance, Whitney, and Jerry did not
discuss the mechanisms of institutional racism. They taught discrimination was a bad
thing without analyzing the causes and mechanisms of racism. Students need more
evidence to base their judgment on how the society was discriminatory. In the case of
Whitney, students were given information about women’s struggles, but there was not
much analysis. All the above points about teaching perspectives cannot be done well if
history still values coverage more than depth, when learning about the process of analytic
thinking and inquiry is not part of the deal, or when controversy is absent fi'om the

instruction.

Depth, Procesgand Controversy

Having the notions of “centrality,” “voice,” and “human agency” in mind when

237

teaching multicultural history, one can teach multicultural history in a more authentic
way through teaching “depth,” “process,” and “controversy.”

“Depth,” “process” and “controversy” are connected ideas in the way I use them.
They are also related to the above concepts of “centrality” and “voice.” That is, “voice”
will not be heard when there is only surface coverage of the experiences of the excluded
groups of people. In-depth study of a perspective does not mean reading added
information without analyzing. It means teaching fewer topics and more inquiry into a
subject. “Depth” is often associated with a pedagogy that engages students in “inquiry”
(Martorella, 1994) or “higher-order thinking” (Newmann, 1988; Newmann, 1990).
Multiculturalists argue the same point that students should be encouraged to understand
how knowledge is constructed and study how perspectives influence how arguments are
made.

Controversy is another characteristic of teaching perspective because it takes
perspectives and accounts to be complex. U.S. history became very controversial after
the 1960’s when people began to view things from their perspectives rather than the
govemment’s or the elite group’s. Conflicting accounts such as those about Colurnbus’s
voyage have inspired teachers to teach from alternative perspectives (Bigelow, 1995;
Loewen, 1995). Ifevery historical event is viewed from the people who were involved, it
would be a fuller picture. Controversy about historical accounts and arguments should
not only be welcomed, but deliberately created so that students will have the opportunity

to engage in discussing alternative perspectives.

238

The Narrative Problem Revisited

Wills and Mehan’s studies on teacher’s teaching multicultural history led them to
argue that without an inclusive common narrative, diverse groups are positioned outside
of the narrative (Wills & Mehan, 1996a; Wills, 1996b). They found that even teachers
who spent a lot of time helping students understand the brutalities, indignities and
injustices suffered by enslaved blacks during the Civil War period, students did not see
the connection between the injustices experienced by Afiican Americans under slavery
and injustices felt by Afiican Americans in Los Angeles in the spring of 1992. They
argued that the students had difliculty to use the past to understand the present because
their knowledge of the injustices experienced by African Americans in American history
was anchored in slavery. The authors believed that that was because Afiican Americans
were absent from the U.S. history other than their presence as slaves during the Civil
War. They said, “when history is taught as discontinuous events, diverse groups appear
in and then disappear from the narrative in unexplained ways. Therefore, students have
difficulty relating the relevance of the past to current events” (1996a, p.8). They
proposed civil rights as the organizing theme for a common narrative where diverse
groups are visible.

Avoiding discontinuity encourages the idea of coherent narrative. We do not
know what kind of narrative should be implemented. But, it is clear that the narrative
problem remains in genuine attempts to teach history from multicultural perspectives.
My suggestions to teach multicultural history based on the ideas of “centrality,” “voice,”
“human agency,” “depth,” “process,” and “controversy” do not resolve the master

narrative problem. They do, however, suggest that there are ways to teach history

239

multicultural history in an authentic way. Ifteachers teach fewer events and try to teach
every event from different participants’ perspectives, students would have a fuller picture
of the past. Scholars who advocate for teaching student historians to resolve the
multicultural controversy have their points. In Meaning over Memory: Recasting the
Teaching of Culture and History, Peter Steams (1993) tried to shift the cultural debate by
saying:
My goals are more radical than the radicals’ in that I seek to reshape the
discussion of the humanities by moving away from debates about which
groups it would privilege... and toward a determination of what kinds of
analyses it should further. I aim for a real transformation of humanities
education in light of the kinds of analytical perspectives—the habits of
mind—it should inculcate. (p.7)
I would add to Steams’ point after doing this research that active efforts should be made
to look for the silenced voices in every event. Teachers could teach students to do
historical inquiry and develop analytical skills by choosing to focus on the different
arguments in the American Revolution presented by political elite without finding out
experiences of Indians, poor whites and women during the war. Without an awareness to
multicultural voices in history, history can be narrowly defined. Multicultural history
teaching is an active way to find the lost voices and teach in such a way that students are

able to make judgments themselves about the past and the present in a democratic

society.

Conclusion
Lance, Whitney and Jerry, three teachers who have the commitment to
multiculturalism, do not teach history in a way that fragments the narrative structure of

mainstream U.S. history, as critics of multicultural history feared would happen. The

240

teachers try to teach in ways that will fulfill both their cultural transmission and
multicultural education goals. Their conceptions of history, beliefs about teaching and
learning, subject matter knowledge, and goals for history teaching play various kinds of
roles in their curriculum and instruction. Despite their willingness to address
multicultural issues, in the end, all three teachers employ “additive approaches” to
multicultural history teaching. Inclusive and sophisticated conceptions of history do not
make a transformative multicultural teacher, nor creative teaching strategies. Their
subject matter knowledge in multicultural history may serve them to select certain topics
and point out certain perspectives, however, these were not deep enough for the teachers
to teach alternative perspectives more contextually. In addition, while these teachers
have the commitment to respond to the call for multiculturalism, they have other
competing commitments that they deem to be important to students. Rather than using
multicultural concepts to conceptualize their history courses, teaching history in a
multicultural way is interpreted differently by the different teachers in order to fit it in
their existing curriculum.

The three teachers’ stories could be construed as lessons for our visions for a
multicultural democracy. Recalling Jerry’s comment on teaching Eurocentric history to
look at slavery and Boxer Rebellion and believe it to be reflected the truth, he said, “if we
were to take that into the present. . ., then as you move from the present into tomorrow,
can you picture what we're gonna be facing with? You're gonna be facing with the same
past.” As recognized by Jerry, multicultural history teaching is important in a diverse
society. If history teaching does not take into account the diverse past, the diverse

population in this society will perpetually be unfairly treated. Yet a teacher like Jerry,

241

given the knowledge that he has, does not teach history the way he wanted it. With the
lack of consensus in a synthetic interpretation of the multicultural past of the U.S. and the
very real institutional constraints, it is important for teacher educators to imagine ways to
prepare and support teachers to teach against the grain.

The implications for teacher education are several. First, this research indicates
the impact of teachers’ subject matter knowledge preparation. Because teachers’ formal
history education in college detemrines a lot of what they know about U.S. history, they
should be encouraged to take ethnic studies, social history, women’s history and the like.
They need to learn about the syntactical and substantive knowledge involved in teaching
multicultural history.

Second, their beliefs about teaching and learning should be an important focus of
teacher education because they shape a lot of the teachers’ approaches to teaching.
Teachers need to have the opportunity to experience constructivist teaching or doing
history themselves so that they may see what history teaching could be like (Wilson &
McDiarmid, 1996). A challenge to multicultural history teaching is that there are so few
works that discuss doing history that are related to multiculturalism.

Third, teachers need to learn to take into account student backgrounds more. A
more student-centered and constructivist instruction requires that teachers know where
their students are in terms of their prior knowledge and learning styles. It appears that the
teachers have assumptions about students based on their teaching experiences or
experiences as learners themselves. However, they have not thought very deeply about
students’ differing learning styles and prior knowledge. Their pedagogies are employed

based on their beliefs about what students should learn and how to teach efl’ectively,

242

rather than what they believe students know and how considerations about students affect
their curriculum.

Fourth, teachers need to have more opportunities to explore their dual goals for
cultural transmission and multicultural education and imagine different ways to do it.
Teachers need to realize the dilemma or conflict that exist between teaching the
mainstream narrative and teaching multicultural history in an authentic way. They should
be encouraged to explore a balance between these two goals. The three teachers in this
research tried to teach what they believe to be important to students. They made choices
about how to balance competing demands of teaching mainstream knowledge and
challenging it. However, not all three teachers are equally aware of the tension between
the goals. Jerry seems to be more aware of the conflict between teaching “cultural
studies” and “U.S. history.” Whereas, there seems to be less conflict in Lance’s and
Whitney’s expressed views. Teachers do not necessarily perceive their goals to be
conflicting. It seems that an important step to explore the balance between cultural
transmission and multicultural teaching is to be aware of potential tensions between
them. Having more models of teaching history in an authentic multicultural way will
also help teachers imagine how to balance their teaching (e.g., Banks, 1993, 1995; Harris,

1995; Kobrin, 1996).

Afterwords
I launched this study with more than the U.S. in mind. Most democratic nation-
states are facing the same issue of diversity. Some nation-states have to deal with their

past diflerenfly, such as South Afiica and Estonia as the political powers and systems

243

changed. Some are dealing with an immigrant society like the U.S. Some are dealing
with national minorities like Canada. Some have complicated histories like Israel.
Taiwan, the place where I came from, is yet another complex case of diversity. It is a de
facto country without international recognition. That is, its national boundary and
national identity are yet to be defined and recognized by not only the international
community, but its own people. This means that in my own country, discussing what is
common and what is different is complicated by factors that the U.S. example will not
explain. Still, there are parallel developments in history writing and education between
the two countries.

As Taiwan has become more democratic, historians in Taiwan began to ask
questions away from the China-centered model”). Some historians began to construct a
different narrative that puts Taiwan at the center and tell a story of resistance and protest
against outside forces, instead of maintaining the old narrative that tells a tale of Taiwan
as the legitimate heir of the Chinese heritage and that its history (and geography) started
from China. However, the new history still slights perspectives of indigenous Taiwanese
who are racially difi'erent from descendants of Chinese immigrants. The new story is told
from the perspective of the majority of the Taiwanese whose ancestors came from China
four hundred years ago from the southern coast of China speaking Holo, a dialect of
Chinese1 1. It omits voices of groups that reside on the island—the indigenous peoples,

the Hakka-speaking Chinese descents, women, the poor, and various disadvantaged

 

'0 Taiwan lifted its Martial Law in 1987 which banned freedom of speech and association. The KMT
government controlled the media, military, and education, among other important institutions. Social
movements and the establishment of the opposition party, Democratic Progressive Party, helped
democratized Taiwan.

” Linguists would say it is a language because mandarin Chinese speakers and H010 speakers cannot
mutually tmderstand each other.

244

groups that are invisible in the society. In this regard, Taiwan and the U.S. are dealing
with different democratic questions. In Taiwan, scholars are more interested in the
Chinese perspective vs. the Taiwanese perspective comparison. When Taiwan’s
authoritarian state gradually transformed to a democratic one, academic freedom also
gradually was restored to the people. Books that used to be banned are allowed to
publish. What were considered to be false histories12 now become important books to
understand Taiwan’s history. This unleashing of intellectual freedom has opened up new
frameworks to think about Taiwan’s past and what it means to be Taiwanese.

At this stage of Taiwan’s democratic development, historians are relatively less
enthusiastic about voices of the indigenous peoples whose historical experiences are not
the same as the majority of the Taiwanese. They are not yet interested in finding out
women’s voice and voices of the poor, laborers, and groups that are marginalized in
society”. The new synthesis tells a tale from a Taiwan-centered perspective that
continues to exclude many of its disadvantaged groups of people. History debates in
Taiwan are still struggling with the proper boundaries of historical narrative—Taiwan or
China?

Despite the differences in the history debate in Taiwan and the U.S., the U.S.
arguments about multiculturalism shed light on what I believe to be central issues of
history debates across democratic countries. That is the issue of freedom of inquiry and
democratic education. Without freedom of speech and inquiry, the political victims in

Taiwan would not be able to tell their stories about what happened in the past during the

 

'2 A couple of examples are Ming Shih’s Four Hundred Years of Taiwan ’s History (ref), and George Kerr’s
Formosa Betrayed (Kerr, 1992).

'3 There are however young scholars trained in the U.S. who do work in those areas. But, the mainstream
work is still from mainstream Taiwanese perspective.

245

government’s authoritarian rule from 1949 to 1987. Scholars will not be able to publish
their works. What matters now to the new history is how it is taught in schools. A recent
doctoral dissertation found that Taiwan’s teachers continue to teach history in an
undemocratic way (Chou, 1999). Classrooms are fill] of teacher talk rather than student
talk; even when the teacher challenges the textbook, right answers are given to students
without invitations for investigations and disagreements.

Shirley Engle, a social studies educator and theorist, said, “there is only one
definition for the social studies, if we can but discover it, that is consonant with freedom
and democracy” (in Barr et al, 1977, p.105). Multiculturalism is a response to societies’
lack of recognition and authenticity of their ignored members (Taylor, 1994). In the U.S.,
critics of multiculturalism are right in their cautions about essentialism in teaching
women’s history exclusive of men, or Afiican American history exclusive of its
relationship with other ethnic groups. However, their claims about the necessity to
maintain the core curriculum on Western civilization and their rejection to social
studies/history curricula that include more non-white cultures and histories are not
conducive to democratic education. Dewey (1916) said,

An undesirable society... is one which internally and externally sets up
barriers to free intercourse and communication of experience. A society
which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on

equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through
interaction of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic.

(p.99) -

A democratic society allows citizens to communicate their experiences. Internal and
external barriers to free flow of communication and interaction are barriers to individual

growth and democracy. Some scholars believe that the state of an immigrant country

246

should maintain its neutrality and not commit itself to nurturing particular cultures and
values of particular groups its citizens form (Walzer, 1995). Such stance, however,
assumes the neutrality of the dominant culture formed by the dominant group which
disadvantaged other groups of people. From critical multiculturalists’ perspectives, the
state should intervene in the process of education by teaching children different cultures
and unraveling injustices in the institutions (Sleeter & McLaren, 1995a). I take Appleby
and her colleagues’ (1994) stance that
[d]espite the naturalness of distorting or firdging the past, the cost of
suppressing information comes high. Nothing could be less true than the old
bromide that what you don't know doesn't hurt you. The very opposite seems
more the case. What you don‘t know is especially hurtful, for it denies you the
opportunity to deal with reality. It restricts choices by decreasing information.
The health of the nation may require a careful winnowing of memory, but a
democratic, and hence American, creed argues otherwise. It endorse the
individual's right to liberty-- and implicitly fieedom of inquiry-- without
reference to the goal of political solidarity (p.308; emphasis added).
The civil rights movements in the 60’s changed a lot of people’s attitude toward what
history told them about the U.S. society to be. The European American presidential
history was not helpful in explaining the reality of social unrest. People looked for
answers. Those who were denied cultural and ethnic identities looked for ways to
express themselves. Over the past few decades, the field of history has produced a lot of
knowledge about what used to be unknown topics and subjects. However, my study
shows that in schools, the opportunity for enlarging students’ understanding about the
reality of the diverse society is limited. Multicultural programs in the nation mostly are

not about restructuring the curricula or the schools; most respond to multiculturalism

through adding a unit, or a course (Gollnick, 1995). The three teachers’ experiences in

247

teaching U.S. history reminds us that certain kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing
are privileged in U.S. high school classrooms. Teachers are not rewarded to teach history
differently. They touch upon multicultural concepts and contents, yet they are
constrained by internal and external factors to teach diverse cultural perspectives and
experiences authentically.

Teaching multicultural history authentically is important for the purpose of
creating a dialogue between diverse cultural experiences. Charles Taylor’s (1994)
defense for multiculturalism is built upon the notion that cultures want to survive and that
the society owes them a presumption of equal worth that deserves equal recognition and
authenticity. Amy Gutrnann (1994) argued from the perspective of liberal democracy that

If human identity is dialogically created and constituted, then public
recognition of our identity requires a politics that leaves room for us to
deliberate publicly about those aspects of our identities that we share, or
potentially share, with other citizens. A society that recognizes individual
identity will be a deliberative, democratic society because individual identity
is partly constituted by collective dialogues. (p.7)
Rather than trying to avoid discussions and studies of the other, these scholars believe
that a democratic society has to have citizens understand, deliberate and make decisions
about their identities. This means that education has to be involved in this process of
deliberation.

My thinking about the history debate in the U.S. and Taiwan calls for a more open
and sympathetic attitude toward people’s expressions. And, in classrooms, teachers
allow those expressions to be understood authentically. James Loewen spells out the

importance of teaching history that reflects the multicultural nature of the society.

For history is central to our ongoing understanding of ourselves and our
society. We need to produce Americans of all social-class and racial

248

backgrounds and of both genders who command the power of history—the
ability to use one’s understanding of the past to inspire and legitimize one’s
actions in the present. . .. Citizens who are their own historians, willing to
identify lies and distortions and able to use sources to determine what really
went on in the past, become a formidable force for democracy (Loewen, 1995,
p.318)

From my perspective, the history debate is a debate about democracy and democratic
education, whether in the U.S. or in Taiwan. This project reinforces for me both how

difficult and how vital defining the educational practice is.

249

APPENDICES

250

Appendix A

Teacher Consent Form

I agree to participate in a research study on multicultural history teaching from teachers’
perspectives as conducted by Pei-Fen Sung, a graduate student at Michigan State
University Department of Teacher Education. I grant permission that the information I
provide to Ms. Sung be published in her dissertation and other research reports.

I have been informed that Ms. Sung will observe two to three units of my history class,
during which time lessons will be recorded through note-taking, audio— and video-taping.
Ms. Sung has informed me that all of my responses to interview questions, records of
classroom activities, and student assignments will be confidential. In her dissertation,
pseudo-names will be used for teachers and students. In addition, Ms. Sung has assured
me that any individual privacy will be maintained in all published and written data
resulting fi'om this study. While the transcripts, without identifiers, will be kept as a
record of this project, all audio- and video- tapes will be destroyed after the dissertation is
approved.

I understand that my participation in this study is voluntary and that I have the right to
withdraw my consent or discontinue participation at any time. I also have the right to
refuse to answer any particular questions. I also understand that I reserve the right to stop
the recorder at any time during an interview.

Signature: Date:

 

251

Appendix B

Interview Guide: Initial Interview
This interview took place before I entered the classrooms.

A. Purpose: To gather information on:
1. Teachers’ personal experiences/backgrounds
2. General views about history, “multicultural teaching,” students, and

purposes
3. Provide Human Subject Consent Form

B. Interview Probes:

(1) Personal Experiences/Backgrounds:

1. Basic statistics: age, place of birth, ethnicity—including experiences
with people of different race

2. Educational background

3. Thoughts on teacher training experience

4. Past teaching. How many years? Where? Grade levels/ subjects
taught/ student populations

5. Number of years at this school? Grades taught?

6. Member of any groups/networks?

([1) Understanding about history
1. Do you remember how you were taught about U.S. history in school
and in college?
a How do you perceive the difference between your own teaching
with how you were taught?
a What do you perceive as the biggest problems in U.S.
concerning the teaching of American history?

([11) Attitudes toward multicultural history
1. Before this investigation, we have talked about your commitment to
multiculturalism. Can you describe again, what comes to mind when you think
of the word “multiculturalism”?
a How does multiculturalism relate to history?
a Is American history multicultural? What would historians say
about this?
a Is U.S. history that you know now different fi'om U.S. history
that you knew before? In what ways and why is it?
0 Why is it important for you to address multiculturalism in
history?
a What concerns or difficulties do you have about teaching
history from this perspective?

252

2. Is there an American national history? Ifyes, what is it? If no,
what is U.S. history? And, what should teachers teach?

(IV) Purposes/ goals and assumptions about students
1. How do you design a lesson? What comes to mind? (students, state
tests, the university, interns, etc.)
a What specifics about students that you consider when teaching
specific units? (race/ethnicity, ability, interests, etc.)
a What specifics about X that you consider when teaching
history?

2. How do you decide what’s going to be in your syllabus?

.1 Here are the history standards that come out of NCHE,
Michigan Social Studies standards, and NCSS. Are you familiar with
these? How do they play roles in your teaching? In your experiences, are
these issues that you would address? Why? How would you address them
? What would you like students to learn?

a Does looking at the past from the perspectives of minorities
something you would teach to students? How do you do that?

253

Appendix C
Interview Guide: Pre- and Post-Observation Interviews
Pre-observation Interviews

1. What are your objective of this unit? How are you going to achieve it?
a What do you most enjoy teaching this particular unit?
a What facts, concepts, skills and values are you trying to teach in this
unit?
a What are some of the strategies you use to facilitate student learning
of these facts, concepts, skills, and values?

2. How do you decide what’s going to be in your curriculum? (Have
teachers tell me)
0 Students? Parents?
0 Policy? School? District? State? National Debate? etc.
9 Ideas of teaching and learning?

Post-observation Interviews

1. What do you most enjoy about teaching this particular unit in this class?
How do you feel about this era/theme?

2. I have observed X in your teaching, could you describe what were you
doing then?
D What would you like students to learn?
a What knowledge and skills would you like students to learn?
a What values would you like students to develop?

3. I have noticed that you emphasize Y in your curriculum. Could you tell
me why?
0 Would you consider it a core curriculum? Do you always include it
in your curriculum?
0 Should there be a core curriculum or canon in history? What would
they be in your view?

4. I have noticed that you have chosen Z as your teaching materials, could
you explain why?

5. I have noticed that you use this strategy, could you explain your reasons
for using such an approach?

6. Tell me about the assignments, why are students doing this?
a What do you hope that they learn? What do you think your students

254

will remember about this unit in five years?
a What are your main ways of evaluating student learning for this
unit?

255

Appendix D

3".“P’PI"

95”.“?

16.

Observation Guide

Do teachers’ beliefs and their practices match? In what ways?

What are their instructional strategies?

How do they use the textbooks?

Do students have opportunities to discuss controversial issues?

D0 teachers create opportunities for students to recognize and criticize authors’
perspectives and values?

Are perspective-taking and knowledge construction a goal?

What skills are taught?

What values are promoted?

Does the teacher use thematic or narrative approach, or something else?

. Does empathy play a role?
11.
12.
l3.
14.
15.

Is mentioning a part of the pedagogy to address multicultural history?

Do they teach complete concepts of groups?

Are teachers explicit about the socialization of values promoted by white society?
How do the students respond to the teaching?

How is classroom discourse conducted? Do the teachers want students to think like
them? What are their bases for judging what are appropriate views and what are not?
What do the teachers decorate their classrooms with?

256

Appendix E

Viewpoint # 1 --the traditional/assimilative/additivel

The U.S. escaped the divisiveness of a multiethnic society by a brilliant solution: the
creation of a brand new identity. The point of America was not to preserve old cultures
but to forge a new, American culture. “By an intermixture with our people,” President
George Washington told VP John Adams, “immigrants will get assimilated to our
customs, measures and laws: in a word, soon become one people. What these immigrants
have in common is the Western tradition which is the source of the ideas of individual
freedom and political democracy (Schlesinger, fi'om Beyond a Dream Deferred, p. 8)2.
American society should not be and is not a group society, to celebrate difi"erences is to
balkanize the nation.

The curriculum should include minorities like Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King,
Jr. who have made contributions to the nation.

 

' The subtitles were not shown to the teachers.
2 References were also hidden from the teachers during the interviews.

257

Viewpoint # 2—the mainstreamed/integrated/European-based

We are a nation of immigrants. We are a multicultural people, but also a single nation
knitted together by a common set of political and moral values. Students must recognize
that American society is now and always has been pluralistic and multicultural. True
patriotism celebrates the moral force of the American idea as a nation that unites as one
people, the descendants of many cultures, races, religions, and ethnic groups. However,
nearly 80 percent of the population of the United States today is of European descent; the
political and economic institutions of the United States were deeply influenced by
European ideas. Europe’s legacy to us is the set of moral and political values that we
Americans subsequently defined and reshaped to enable us, in all our diversity, to live
together in freedom and peace.

Pluralism should be presented as a key to understanding and defining the American
community—a society and a culture to which we all belong. Ifthere is no overall
community, if all we have is a motley collection of racial and ethnic cultures, there will
be no sense of the common good. Each group will fight for its own particular interests,
and we could easily disintegrate as a nation, becoming instead embroiled in the kinds of
ethnic conflicts that often dominate the foreign news each night (Ravitch, 1990 with my
modification).

In the teaching of American history, wherever historically appropriate, the curriculum
should recognize the importance of ethnic groups in the building of the nation. Students
should leam about the Hispanic roots of the Southwest, the cultures of Native American
tribes, and Asian and Chicano immigration to California. And, the internment of

J apanese-Americans during World War H is confronted and honestly treated as a violation
of basic human rights.

258

Viewpoint # 3 —the transformative/critical one that tells more than one story and tell
stories from the silenced, and about knowledge construction, injustices, from the people’s

perspectives

To be effective and to promote the democratic values that are such an important part of
our country’s tradition, our curricula must be consciously anti-racist and nonsexist
(Singer, 1992). U.S. history has been written by those in power—mostly the white
European males. Minorities, women and the poor have been excluded fiom the
narrative. Therefore, the school, college, and university curriculum should be reformed
so that it will more accurately reflect the histories and cultures of these peOple (Banks,
1993)

The previously excluded people ’s perspectives should be studied in-depth across the
curriculum so that students may empathize with the people and be emotionally aroused to
issues of injustice and inequality. We could tell the story of the discovery of America
from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves,
of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the New Deal as seen by blacks in
Harlem, etc. (Zinn, 1980). From the vantage points of Native Americans, African-
Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Asian-Americans, the history of individual choice
and freedom, and of democracy, unfortunately does not speak to the reality that most of
them and their predecessors in America have experienced. Only when we confront the
past honestly and when the excluded Americans can come forth freely to reclaim their
histories, and when institutional barriers to equal opportunities for all Americans have
been removed can we speak of seeking common ground, of forging unity and consensus
(Hu-DeHart, 1993).

259

Viewpoint # 4 —the historical inquiry

Even granting that history teaching must address the roles of elite and subordinate groups
in history and must deal seriously with historical traditions other than our own, the
fundamental challenge to us is slightly difl‘erent. That challenge is to decide what the
historical discipline is all about, in light of the recent recasting of scholarship. Is it
primarily a set of facts? Or is it an active analytic tool, providing habits of thought—
based, to be sure, on expanding data—that assist in understanding how institutions
function, how ofiicially approved ideas relate to popular beliefs and actions, and how and
why groups change in basic behaviors ranging fiom voting patterns to birth rates?
(Stearns, 1991)

To define and interpret history means to include some and to leave others out. No one
group should accept that awesome responsibility for the rest of us. Studying history in
school should begin with learning the habits of mind, the skills, and the ways of thinking
that produce legitimate historical generalizations appropriately supported and
documented from reliable sources. Student historians have the same right to
interpretation and intentionality that has always been the work-right of professional
historians. Any historian, including school-age historians, can create a valid, personally
satisfying historical account—so long as the student historian follows appropriate
standards and procedures for historical research (Kobrin, 1992).

260

Appendix F

Topics Covered in Lance’s U.S. History Class

 

U.S. History
1St Sem., Pre-Civil War to WWI 1820-1918

 

 

Issues in America: 1800-1850
Land policy

Indian policy

Slavery

Tariff

States rights

Religion

Immigration

Social issues

 

 

4—

Sectionalism, Expansion, Slavery

Missouri compromise

Abolitionist movement

Slavery as a political issue, racism and effects

Free soil and republican parties

Mexican war and Manifest Destiny

Compromise of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Dred Scott, Bleeding Kansas

 

 

. Causes of the Civil War

States rights

Tariff

Economic difierences

Political power

Slavery-Lincoln, Republicans and Democrats
Election of l860-Outbreak of Civil War

 

212-no P-P P‘PEWS’ P-P P‘Pmp‘qarhogmp 9'1»:—

. The American Civil War

Northern Attitude, Southern Motivation

Advantages, both sides, compare to other wars

War in the East and West, Strategies

Battles and Turning points, Bull Run to Appomattox, Sherman’s March
Politics and behind the war effort

 

Reconstruction Period

Lincoln’s Plan

Radical Republicans

Martial law and the South-Freedman’s Bureau
Efl’ects of Reconstruction on Blacks and the nation
Segregation, KKK, Plessy vs. Ferguson

Hands off policy

Post war corruption; effects of the war

 

 

ee<an~eeper<seesrs

t—t
O

U.S. 1865-1900 Political, Economic, and Social issues
Indian policy, effects
Western expansion—“Wild West”

 

261

 

 

Farmers, free silver, populist party
Workers and labor unions
Railroad, big business, trusts
Social issues, women, segregation
Urbanization and city politics

The Gilded Age

 

H. Foreign Affairs 1865-1900
Isolation and imperialism
Expansion-Hawaii
Spanish American War, Cuba-Philippines
Big stick policy, Roosevelt Corollary
China and Asia-Spheres and Influence
Boxer Rebellion, Open door policy

. Immigration

 

<mmseeee<eqorwep

IH. Progressive Movement

Populism and reform-political change
Role of government

Trusts, Conservation, Consumer Protection
Democratic reforms, tariff

Women’s rights, political reforms

 

. WW1 and U.S.
Isolation-Causes of war (Europe)
Causes of American involvement
Wilson 14 points
Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations

 

‘eee‘egeepe‘e

 

 

U.S. History—20th Century 1920-Present
2'"d Semester

 

A. America 1920’s

1. Normalcy & Harding election, scandals
1(a) Mood of the country

2. Red scare, KKK, democratic principles
3. Prohibition & problems

4. Prosperity, roaring 20’s, Coolidge

5. Fundamentalism, farm problems

6. Hoover & prosperity, Harlem Renaissance
7. Causes of Depression-stock market

(a) Description of Depression

b) Election 1932

 

 

B. America 1930’s—Depression

1. F.D.R. & The New Deal, philosophy

2. Pump priming & government involvement

(a) Government programs; NRA, C.C.C., WPA, social security, T.V.A., A.A.A., and
others

(b) Pro & con, New Deal programs

262

 

 

3. Roosevelt & power? The supreme court

4. Evaluation of the New Deal

5. Foreign policy—good neighbor policy; Russia & U.S.
6. War build up, Hitler, Nazi’s

 

C. World War H & America

1. Neutrality, cash & carry, lend lease

2. Peal Harbor, American involvement

3. War in Europe & Asia

4. Home front during war—conditions

5. Wars end, Atomic bomb, Yalta Conference
6. Cold War begins; policy changes

 

D. Post war domestic policy

1. Truman & policies—demobilization

2. Economic problems, price controls, strikes
3. GI. Bill, Taft-Hartley Act

4. Senator McCarthy-Red Scare

5. Fair Deal-Civil Rights

6. Election 1948-Dixiecrats

 

E. Eisenhower-Domestic policy 1950’s

1. Modern Republicanism-Middle of the road philosophy-Election 195 2

2. Issues-1950’s

(a) Labor unions-power, corruption, Labor Act

(b) Peace & prosperity, materialism & the 1950’s, movement to suburbs

(c) Civil Rights, Brown vs. Board of Education (Supreme Court), forced integration,
resistance, Little Rock Montgomery (Bus Boycott), Martin L. King

 

 

F. Post war foreign policy-1945-1960
1. Cold War-Containment, Soviet Union
(a) Berlin-Germany, Poland
(b) NATO, Marshall Plan, Truman Doctrine
(c) Korean War, Causes & Policy UN.
(1) Differences-Korea & Vietnam
((1) China, Mao Tse Tung, Chiang Kai-Shek Communist China and Taiwan
(e) Middle East-Wars, Suez Canal
f) U-2 Incident, Arms race

 

 

G. Kennedy & Johnson, U.S., 1960’s

1. Election 1960, Nixon-Kennedy-debates

2. Kennedy & New Frontier, issues and proposals, Medicare, space, and civil rights

3. Assassination? Speculation & facts?

4. L.B.J. Great Society; Passing of Kennedy issue-Civil Rights Act 1964. Pollution, war
on poverty, government spending

5. Foreign afl‘airs, 1960’s

(a) Vietnam War

(b) History & background, French

(0) U.S. involvement, containment domino theory, problems & controversy, difierent
points of view, failure & why? Nixon Plan-Election 1968

(d) Counter culttue, drugs, hippies, protest, hypocrisy; civil rights, anti-war, women’s

263

 

 

movement

 

 

H. Nixon Administration-U.S. 1970’s

1. War’s end—pro & con success or failure?

2. Revenue sharing, wage & price controls energy problem (oil prices), China policy
3. Watergate scandal

(a) Tactics, plumbers, dirty tricks, President’s men & why? Tapes & Nixon, resignation
4. Ford administration-Pardon, inflation, energy

5. Carter administration

(1) Energy, inflation, political experience

(2) Middle East-Egypt-Peace

(3)1ran-Hostages, Shaw

(4) Economic problems, unemployment

 

 

1. Election 1980, Reagan administration 80’s
1. Government spending, cuts, budget, inflation
2. Foreign policy-military build up—defense

3. Cold War, Arms race

4. Iran-Contra, Latin America & U.S.

 

264

 

Appendix G

Topics Covered in Whitney’s U.S. History Class

1. Reconstruction

2. The West

*Historical People Project (students choose their topics)
3. New Industrialization (late 1800’s, early 1900’s)

4. Sweatshops, factory work

5. Labor Movement

6. Women’s Sufl’rage Movement

7. Immigration

8. Life in the Cities

*Historical Places Project (fi‘om U.S. History, preferably)
9. Relations with Latin America around the turn of the century (1900)
10. Progressive Era

11. World War I

12. Culture ofthe 1920’s

13. Great Depression/New Deal

*Historical Book Project (20'h Century)

14. World War H

15. Culture/Family Life of the 1950’s, Image vs. Reality
16. Experiences of Native American Indians 1945-1960
17. Civil Rights Movement

18. Vietnam

19. Culture of the 1960’s

265

Appendix H
Topics Covered in Jerry’s U.S. History Class

1. The Land in Inhabitants: Prehistory-1600
Native Americans to Present
2. European Exploration: 1000-1650
Leif Erickson to Amerigo Vespucci
3. Settlements and Colonization: 1530-1775
Encomieda to Colonial America
4. Independence to Nationhood: 1775-1789
Taxation to Constitution
5. Early Presidents: 1789-1800
Washington to Adams
6. Jefiersonian Era: 1801-1816
Toussaint to Lewis and Clark
7. The Industrial Revolution: 1790-1825
Cotton to Machines
8. J acksonian Era: 1824-1840
Political Spoils to Trail of Tears
9. Westward Expansion: 1820-1860
Buffaloes and Gold
10. American Differences: 1820-1860
Territorial Outlooks
11. The Civil War: 1860-1865
A House Divided
12. Reconstruction: 1865-1 877
Starting Over
13. Settling the West: Inventions and Urbanizations: 1877-1914
Changing Lifestyles
14. Domestic Reformation and Overseas Expansion: 1865-1916
A Question of Morality
15. World War I and the Roaring Twenties: 1919-1929
Attempt at Influence
16. The Great Depression: 1929-1941
Financial Trouble
17. World War H: 1935-1945
America Becomes a Leader
18. The Cold War Era: 1945-1960
Ideological Confrontation
19. Age of Protests: 1960-1980
Right to Dignity
20. Changing Attitudes and Faces: 1980-Present
America- A Melting Pot
21. A view towards the 21St Century
Where are we headed

266

Appendix I
Whitney’s instruction sheet

Industrialization of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s
Small group mini-research project

Members of group:

 

Topic:

 

A. Research your topic and prepare a presentation for the class in which you address
most of the following questions:

1. Define what your topic is.

2. Explain the effect your topic had on

«the industrialization of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s

«business and industry

«people’s lives

3. Who were some of the people involved in the discovery, invention, sale,

use of the topic?
4. Any other interesting and relevant information.

B. Create any visual aids that will be helpful for your presentation including pictures,
charts, diagrams, etc.

C. When you have finished planning your presentation, write a quiz question that will
be answered during the presentation to the class. Make sure the question will be
clearly addressed in the presentation.

Grade
Your grade will be based on the following things:
*Doing your share within the group
*The thoroughness of the information gathered created

*The quality of your presentation
*The quiz will be a separate grade

267

Appendix J
Interview Instrument
(Teachers choose seven topics out of the ten topics that they would like to teach)

American Revolution

Women in the American Experience
Immigration

Civil War

Reconstruction

the Frontier

Great Depression

History of the American Presidency
Native American history to the present
U.S. foreign policy since World War H

268

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269

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