Scholars have long identified fostering democratic citizenship as a primary purpose of public schooling in the United States, as schools should intentionally prepare students with the knowledge and skills needed for active, informed democratic citizenship. In addition, global interconnectedness has reshaped needed civic competencies to participate in civic life. This conceptual article considers the intersections between civic and world history education, assessing the relationship between the two disciplines in order to create a framework of best practices in world history civic education. Global citizenship discourse is analyzed using this framework, considering how different forms may reinforce or undermine world history’s purpose of preparing students with pluralist understandings for global democratic living. Drawing on components of history education, world history, and global citizenship education scholarship, this article seeks to establish epistemological clarity as to how world history can contribute to meaningful civic education and vice versa.
PurposeThis work explores the creation and purposes of an inquiry about Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino revolutionary and sometimes United States ally, as a means to discuss the value of both inquiry and historical empathy in bridging history instruction and civic life. Though history is often identified as a means to foster democratic dispositions, learning can often feel disconnected from students' lived experiences, let alone directly connect to their out-of-classroom circumstances. Teaching with historical empathy allows students to affectively engage with content, resulting in complex reasoning and content acquisition.Design/methodology/approachThe authors explain an original inquiry that uses the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) and historical empathy to help students complicate Emilio Aguinaldo and his legacy. By combining historical empathy and the inquiry model, the authors structured their work for practitioner use but also as a way to draw on rarely emphasized content in US or World history courses.FindingsIn using this model, students will be able to apply their learning in a civic engagement task related to modern questions of US geopolitics.Originality/valueThe authors offer and explore the process of an original inquiry as a way to help practitioners and scholars consider how to create other such rigorous opportunities for students to practice global citizenship.
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