Poetry as method in the history classroom: decolonising possibilities

Abstract

Poetry can present historical material in a non-academic format. This format may be particularly important for students who are excluded from epistemic access (Morrow, 2007). This exclusion stems from many things, but ways of writing, ways of framing history, and whose voices and stories are heard are part of this exclusion. This article explores using poetry as a method of decolonising history teaching, primarily in teacher training classroom contexts. Poetry provides a unique combination of orality, personal perspective, artistic license, and historical storytelling. The form can also draw students into a lesson. As a device somewhat removed from students' ideas about what history is, poetry is an alternative way of investigating ideas of "truth", evidence, narrative, and perspective. It provides an entry point to historical topics, that can be supplemented through other texts and forms of evidence. Poetry also provides a voicing for sensitive topics, acknowledges and embraces complexity and pain. It could also remove the teacher as mediator, even if only for a moment. Additionally, it can open space for marginalised voices and stories. By drawing from local poems, especially by black womxn poets, race and gender are centred in the conversation in a visceral way. International poets open conversations about globally linked histories. Poets from different generations raise questions of continuity and change. All poems are open to examination through historical thinking skills. This article explores the tensions in decolonising the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) history Further Education and Training (FET)(Senior High School) curriculum and in using a creative medium such as poetry to do so.

Attempts to (re)capture the school history curriculum? Reflections on the history ministerial task team's report

“…But, because they may not have used 'academic' theory and concepts, this knowledge exists outside of the academy" (Maluleka & Ramoupi, 2022: 77). This, we believe, is useful and consistent with calls made by some decolonial scholars for a decoloniality approach that embraces knowledge pluralisation to underpin school history (see: Ramoupi & Ntongwe, 2017;Godsell, 2019;Maluleka, 2021;Maluleka & Ramoupi, 2022).…”

“…Here we are thinking about the meaningful inclusion of histories of people such as Nkoli Tseko Simon , the founder of South Africa's African gay movement who embodied its link with the antiapartheid struggle (Pettis, 2015). This way, history educators and learners will be engaged in the study of the past that is not devoid of the gender-and-other lens or gazes (Wills, 2016), and those educators and learners who identify as LGBTIQA+ would begin to see themselves, feel themselves, more in the work they do in class (Godsell, 2019).…”

Teaching critical thinking and voice in history essays: A spiderweb tool

“…1 Students often seem to dichotomise critical thinking and an idea of voice: either everything is thought and felt (voice) or argued and substantiated (critical thinking), where they feel they are allowed to have no words or ideas of their own. 2 This has been reinforced by a colonial education system in which 'rational' is valid and 'emotional' is not (Godsell 2019). In attempts to get students to read and engage with the arguments and content of subject experts, students are reminded that these are not their ideas, that they do not have the knowledge, that they must not plagiarise, that they must rewrite in their own words (at the same time as we tell them they do not have the knowledge).…”

Using a historical memoir to improve curriculum coherence in teacher education: The case of Trevor Noah's Born a Crime

“…ere are growing calls to blur the boundaries of disciplinary knowledge in the interests of decolonising education, which some have argued will foreground new transdisciplinary epistemologies (Gray, 2017;Davids, 2018;Wassermann, 2018b;Godsell, 2019). While we do not yet know where these debates will lead or what the outcomes of these interventions will be in terms of school-level curriculum policy, we do know that we need to be preparing our pre-service teachers to think outside of the disciplinary boundaries that have shaped much of their education.…”