Challenging Gender Bias through a Transformative High School Social Studies Curriculum

Abstract

This article reports on an effort to use a transformative curriculum in 11th grade United States history classes to promote student examination of bias in contemporary American society and to encourage student reflection on and reconsideration of personal views about gender. As part of a unit on the struggle for equality in post-World War II United States, students created and then discussed cartoon dialogues depicting two teenage women. An analysis of these cartoon dialogues illustrates some of the problems teachers face when they assume that students are making the intellectual connections they expect. It also underscores the social positionality of student understanding. Suggestions for helping students connect academic knowledge to their understanding of the world in which they live are included.