Mapping the Shadow: Bringing Scholarship and Teachers Together to Explore Agency's Shape and Content in Social Change

Judging on Their Looks: Understanding Pre-Service Social Studies Teachers' Conceptions of Historical Agency and Gender

“…In order for students to develop an understanding of historical agency and create critical feminist rationale for teaching gender equity, there is a need for more research on how pre-service teachers make sense of these concepts. Because of this lack of research on the exploration of historical agency and gender, this study followed the work of other researchers who have used teachers to better understand the historical thinking process (e.g., den Heyer, 2012; Seixas, 1998) in order to shed light on how they use historical agency and gender as lenses in their own historical thinking.…”

“…Furthermore, researchers have called for the centrality of studying historical agency as a way to improve students' democratic action, participation, and decision-making in the present (Barton, 2010(Barton, , 2011den Heyer, 2003;Peck, Poyntz, & Seixas, 2011). Still, Levstik and Barton (2011) argued that little to no research exists that investigates students' understanding of historical agency as it relates to the consideration of their own agency in the present and den Heyer (2012) pointed out that there is a lack of research that examines the complexities and dimensions of agency as well as its connection to historical understanding and social change. Moreover, there is a lack of research on the ways in which historical agency and gender intersect and how these understandings might contribute to a more inclusive history curriculum.…”

Virtuous Subjects: A Critical Analysis of the Affective Substance of Social Studies Education

“…His survey of critical practices of historians and anthropologists who disturb the received traditions of linear narratives have resulted in "a heightened awareness of history's literary and creative functions" that allowed for history and historiography to be "defined as partial, subjective, and partisan" (p. 358). Similarly, den Heyer (2003den Heyer ( , 2012, offered instances when historical narratives are mobilized for a type of agency derived inside the humanist subject of the student as a social agent. Affect and emotion are useful constructs in considering how students and teachers engage with America as a historical narrative when different perspectives emerge and conflict with their various subject positions (gendered, political, and economic) and how such perspectives produce and violate various dispositions and sensibilities (Chandler & McKnight, 2009;Seixas & Clark, 2004;VanSledright, 2002).…”