Participation in the Classroom to Civic and Political Engagement

My Social Sciences Teaching Rationale

Marco Pomenti

McGill University
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Throughout my time as a student, from secondary school to university, I encountered

people who were dissatisfied with history as a learnable subject, myself included. The stories my

friends and I would share about how our history courses were the same every year, how it was a

course where memorization was key and where remembering dates was the primary method of

ensuring we could pass the class. There was something which many of my history educators

shared in common, and this was a lack of an ability to engage their students in discussion, to

essentially get us, as students, to care about the history we were being taught. I think stating this

to be my ultimate goal as a social sciences educator is too narrow of a scope. To inspire students

to thoughtfully engage with history is something I hope for without a doubt, yet this passion I

wish to inspire must go on and continue outside of the classroom into the everyday lives of the

students I will eventually teach. To turn a history class into a class which can inspire students to

undertake civic action and to participate in the political, democratic world around them is

specifically what my sense of purpose as a history teaching will be. To use a secondary school

education to form future citizens is what I hope to accomplish.

The previous initial statement of my teaching rationale has quite a lot of elements to

unpack and clarify. To begin, looking at Clark and Case in their article “Four Defining Purposes

of Citizenship Education,” I identify primarily with the social reform and personal development

rationales as defined by the authors. While all four are extremely important dimensions, I believe

these two ideas, the concept of changing one’s society while fostering a personal development,

fits the most with what I hope to inspire as a history instructor. Ken Osborne offers the

conclusion that teaching must “stimulate students’ imaginations, and help them to think critically

and frame useful questions” (Osborne, 2017, p. 17). I can only imagine that if my personal

experience of learning history was supplemented by questions which enabled discussion and
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critical thinking, I would have enjoyed my secondary school history courses much more. Ann

Matthews argues in her article that transformative teaching must be used in order to challenge

the status quo of what we know teaching to be currently. (Matthews, 2017). Her main contention

comes with the discussion of power dynamics, yet this leads perfectly into a discussion on how

the status quo of teaching history should be challenged for a more discussion oriented option.

Osborne’s thoughts are supplemented by those of Grant Rodwell who argued in his article that

some uses of historical fiction can provide opportunities for student engagement in history

(Rodwell, 2013). The common thread between these two authors is the idea of student

engagement as the primary use for history education instead of a regurgitation of dates to fit the

core of provincial examinations. An influential history teacher, something I personally hope to

be, is therefore able to properly prepare their students for examinations while also allowing them

to engage in the material in a thoughtful way as described by Osborne and Rodwell. This way,

students can feel like they are not only being taught, but that they are also participants in a

broader conversation about concepts which can better prepare them for the future.

Students who are engaged by their history teachers in such a manner can then continue

outside of their schools to engage in civic action, coupled with a participation in democracy. In

becoming informed individuals through the use of student engagement outlined earlier, I hope to

inspire students to then go out and participate in society to initiate real change. William Wraga in

his article “Teaching Active Citizenship” advocates for the importance of citizenship education

in the everyday curriculum. He comes to the conclusion that political engagement for students

can come in the form of political literacy, defined as “the ability and the inclination to use

knowledge in a constructive way to actively address the issues and problems of our day” (Wraga,

1989, p. 49). Wraga stresses the importance of an individual’s civic duty and participation in
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democracy, something which he argues must be taught to students at an early age to encourage

activism within them. This central concept is at the core of my own social sciences teaching

rationale; the idea of inspiring students not only to develop as political, intellectual beings who

exhibit critical thought, but also as beings who can think for themselves while organizing and

engaging in civic projects in their own communities. Barton & Levstik argue in their article that

encouraging students to take part in civil society is just as important as encouraging participation

in surrounding democratic systems. Here we can see the crux of my own social science rationale

come together. I wish to engage students thoughtfully, and focus on critical discussions of

history instead of a concentration on the memorization of facts. Through this, I hope to inspire

students to engage in not only their own education, but to go into their own worlds and organize

their own civic action within a democratic sphere. This can entail organizing anything from

fundraisers to school election, to community projects, to much more. This engagement in one’s

public space can offer a fulfilling experience for the individuals taking part in it, an experience

which can expand on one’s citizenship, a concept reflected by Barton & Levstik. A student could

be motivated to participate in civic action because of the effect such participation can have in

their own communities; a motivation inspired through their general schooling, especially in the

social sciences. This engagement of students is important because without it, we leave students

to simply think of the social sciences, and specifically history, as I did during my schooling; as a

subject devoid of interaction and discussion, as a subject of memorization of what happened

instead of why it happened.

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References

Barton & Levstik. (2017) Participatory Democracy And Democratic Humanism. In Paul

Zanazanian (Ed.), Applied Methods in Teaching Social Science in Secondary Schools

(pp. 30-40). McGill University.

Clark & Case. (2017) Four Defining Purposes of Citizenship Education. In Paul Zanazanian

(Ed.), Applied Methods in Teaching Social Science in Secondary Schools (pp. 19-29).

McGill University.

Matthews, A. (2005). Mainstreaming Transformative Teaching. In TRIPP P. & MUZZIN L.

(Eds.), Teaching as Activism: Equity Meets Environmentalism (pp. 95-105). McGill-

Queen's University Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7zrhs.13

Osborne. (2017) The Teaching of History and Democratic Citizenship. In Paul Zanazanian (Ed.),

Applied Methods in Teaching Social Science in Secondary Schools (pp. 7-18). McGill

University.

Rodwell, G. (2013). Student Engagement through Historical Narratives. In Whose History?:

Engaging History Students through Historical Fiction (pp. 17-28). South Australia:

University of Adelaide Press. Retrieved from

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.20851/j.ctt1t304sf.7

Wraga, W. (1989). Political Literacy: Teaching Active Citizenship. Educational Horizons, 68(1),

46-49. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42926211