Using counter-narratives to expand from the margins

Abstract

I position the use of counter-narratives as a critical approach that grants students agency and meaning in their learning and provides teachers with opportunities to present silenced curricular narratives as relevant and necessary in a globalized setting such as North America. Counter-narratives focus on a subject that preserves colonial and neo-colonial narratives to millions of K–12 students daily: social studies. The counter-narratives in this article, drawn from the collective actions of the Young Lords Party, provide the reader with concrete examples of how counter-narratives empower students who have been marginalized by the dominant social studies curriculum and educators who have been flustered by the standardization of the curriculum.

Keywords:

• Counter-narratives
• autoethnography
• social studies
• curriculum
• Young Lords Party

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Given my complex history with identity (explained in greater detail in the positionality statement section), I will use Latino, Latinx, and Latine (and their plural versions) interchangeably.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tommy Ender

Tommy Ender is an assistant professor in the Feinstein School of Education and Human Development at Rhode Island College. His current research examines the roles of music in understanding the past while preparing for the future. His work has been published in the International Journal of Multicultural Education, the Journal of Social Studies Research, the Journal of Latinos and Education, and elsewhere.