History Education from the Classroom Up: Re-examining Purposes and Values of the Field

Closes:
Journal
Social Studies Research and Practice
Guest editor(s)
Ava Jackson, Charles Tocci,

Submit your paper here
 

Introduction

History education has had moments of critical reflexivity in times of sociopolitical turmoil, such as the development of the “New Social Studies” in the 1960s (Byford & Russell, 2007) or positioning “historical thinking” as a response to the 1994 national history standards battles (Wineburg, 1999). During these moments, scholars and practitioners alike openly challenge and re-imagine the current structures of the field through interrogation of, as well as innovation with, core practices and disciplinary constructs (i.e. historical consciousness [Duquette, 2021), civic development (Carrasco, 2023), criticality (Santiago & Dozono, 2022), or historical thinking (Smith, Breakstone, & Wineburg, 2018)). This re-imagining is informed by broader sociological contexts and issues, with the aim to re-align the purposes and values of history education in conjunction with changed classroom design and practice.  

The current wave of intense partisan focus on history education in the United States started with the 1776 Commission (2021), which argued that “[r]ather than cast aside the serious study of America’s founding principles or breed contempt for America’s heritage, our educational system should aim to teach…a history that is ‘accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling’” (p.34). But normative claims to the purposes and values of history education, whether partisan or scholarly, have a complex relationship with what actually happens in schools (American Historical Association, 2024). Perhaps this is why we rarely see faithful enactments of individual constructs; teachers, sensitive to their complex contexts, often employ hybrid practices informed by multiple constructs (Carretero, & Perez-Manjarrez, 2022; Blevins & Salinas, 2012). These learning experiences are value-laden and bound up with the particulars of what, how, who, and why we teach. 

This special issue seeks articles that examine the purposes and values of history education from the broader perspective of teaching and learning in U.S. classrooms. We ask contributors to explore the purposes and values of history education emerging from “messy” classroom realities. Papers will engage innovative theoretical and methodological approaches illuminating teacher and students’ historical practice situated within cultural & socio-political context. Example questions include:

  • How are teachers and students reconciling contradictory narratives of the field’s purposes in their meaning-making? How are these reconciliations reflected in their historical practice?  
  • How do teachers compose their practices among complex mandates and local conditions? What purposes and values get enacted through these hybrid approaches?

Our goal is not to explore every core construct of the field; rather, we wish to demonstrate how the design and enactment of constructs-in-practice reflect purposes and values specific to the onto-epistemologies, axiologies, and sociopolitical contexts of the classroom. Engaging empirical explorations of constructs in classroom contexts will illuminate current purposes and values of history education as practiced by teachers and students themselves, opening potential pathways for developing theories responsive to ever-changing socio-political realities of education-in-practice.  
 

 

List of Topic Areas

  • History Education
  • Disciplinary Core-Constructs  
  • Theory-to-Practice Scholarship
  • History Pedagogy & Educational Design
  • Social & Political Contexts of History Education 

 

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/journal/ssrp 
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see here: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/ssrp#jlp_author_guidelines 
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to ““Please select the issue you are submitting to”. 
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.


Key Deadlines

Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 9/1/2025

Closing date for manuscripts submission: 6/1/2026

 

Guest Editors

Ava Jackson, PhD 
Assistant Professor of Education 
School of Education, Loyola University Chicago 
USA  
[email protected] 


Charles Tocci, EdD 
Associate Professor of Education 
School of Education 
Loyola University Chicago 
USA 
[email protected]   

 

References

  • Blevins, B., & Salinas, C. (2012). Critical notions of historical inquiry: An examination of teacher enactment in history classrooms.
  • Byford, J., & Russell, W. (2007). The New Social Studies: A historical examination of curriculum reform. Social Studies Research and Practice, 2(1), 38-48.
  • Carrasco, C. J. G. (2023). Re-Imagining the Teaching of European History: Promoting civic education and historical consciousness. Routledge.
  • Carretero, M., & Perez-Manjarrez, E. (2022). Learning History. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  • Duquette, C. (2021). Critical Historical Consciousness as the goal of History Education? Thoughts on a possible operationalization in the classroom. El futur comença ara mateix: L'ensenyament de les ciències socials per interpretar el món i actuar socialment, 13-29. https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/caplli/2021/259310/futurcomavu_a2021-13-29.pdf
  • Metzger, S. A. & Harris, L. M. (2018) The Wiley International Handbook of History Teaching and Learning. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
  • President's Advisory 1776 Commission. (2021). The 1776 Report. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-Pre…  
  • Santiago, M., & Dozono, T. (2022). History is critical: Addressing the false dichotomy between historical inquiry and criticality. Theory & Research in Social Education, 50(2), 173–195. https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2022.2048426
  • Smith, M., Breakstone, J., & Wineburg, S. (2018). History Assessments of Thinking: A Validity Study. Cognition and Instruction, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2018.1499646
  • Wineburg, S. (1999). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts. The Phi Delta Kappan, 80(7), 488-499