Race and the Evidence of Experience: Accounting for Race in Historical Thinking Pedagogy

ABSTRACT

How can history pedagogy account for racialized experiences impacting historical thinking in the present? In contrast to a more universalized set of historical thinking skills, this article asserts a framework for historical inquiry through students’ racialized experiences. What does historical inquiry through racialized experience look like? Rather than merely make room in the curriculum to validate racialized experience, students require tools to confront and historicize their experiences in a racialized world. Through three essential questions addressing the relationship between historical thinking and racialized experience, I emphasize historical scholarship that centers racially marginalized experiences. These essential questions lead into a framework for reorienting historical inquiry in the classroom, complimenting rather than replacing mainstream historical thinking pedagogy.

KEYWORDS:

• History education
• critical race theory
• cultural studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Black Youth Project’s website is a media hub that recenters Black youth in making, processing, analyzing, and presenting data about Black youth through various media platforms.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tadashi Dozono

Tadashi Dozono is an assistant professor of history/social science education at California State University Channel Islands. He received his PhD in social and cultural studies from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, and has taught for many years in New York City public schools. Through cultural studies, ethnic studies, queer theory, and critical theory, Tadashi’s research examines the production of knowledge in social studies classrooms, emphasizing accountability towards the experiences of marginalized students. Recent publications include ‘The passive voice of White supremacy: Tracing epistemic and discursive violence in world history curriculum’ (2020) in Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, and ‘Negation of being and reason in the world history classroom: “They used to think of me as a lesser being”’ (2019) in Race Ethnicity and Education.