Teaching history on the border: teachers voice their views

Abstract

The overall objective of this investigation was to explore the views of border history teachers on a wide variety of issues that influence their instructional approaches, curricular content choices, and capacity to teach history more effectively. More specifically, the focus was on identifying factors that affect their ability to utilize culturally relevant pedagogy and to integrate into their classroom instruction elements of the local border community, and of the Latin American, Latino, and Mexican American experience. Findings confirmed that structural factors such as mandated curriculum standards, adopted textbooks, and high-stakes tests all serve to limit the teachers’ ability to integrate the Latino and minority experience into their classroom narrative. Although most teachers expressed support for the inclusion of Latino history, in actual practice they reported having insufficient time, training, or resources to adequately do so. The implications that Latino curricular exclusion has for students on the border are also discussed.

Keywords:

• Latino
• Mexican American
• history teachers
• culturally relevant pedagogy