How Students Navigate the Construction of Heritage Narratives

Abstract

Using a multiple case study design, I examine how public high school students (n = 17) make sense of narratives about defining events with which they have specific heritage connections. Focusing on 3 groups of students (Hmong, Chinese, and Jewish) studying 3 heritage events (respectively, the Vietnam War, Modern China, and the Holocaust), this article addresses the following research question: How do students in public schools construct narratives of those events with which they have a heritage connection? Findings indicate that students appreciate, benefit, and learn from the inclusion of heritage histories in their high school classrooms; they can engage in complex historical thinking about subjects that may hold heavy emotional weight; and emotion can facilitate student engagement with heritage histories. Importantly, including these histories in the official knowledge of the classroom legitimated the stories and demonstrated to the students that their own and their families’ pasts are an important part of history.

Keywords:

• emotion
• heritage
• history education
• identity
• secondary education
• social studies education

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to Kathryn E. Engebretson and Maia Sheppard for their insightful and substantive feedback throughout the writing process.

Notes

¹ With the exception of St. Paul, all names of towns and schools are pseudonyms. Also, all student and teacher names are pseudonyms. Given the nature of the study and the importance of the students’ heritage, the students’ pseudonyms were chosen to reflect their given names. Students with traditional ethnic names were given ethnic pseudonyms, and students with Americanized names were given Americanized pseudonyms.

² The Bielski partisans were an organization started by four brothers, Tuvia, Alexander, Asael, and Aron Bielski, who conducted sabotage missions against Nazis and other groups that had aided in persecuting Jews during World War II. Their tactics often included combat activities. It is estimated that the organization saved over 1,000 Jewish lives during the war.