ABSTRACT

This study investigates how 19 third-grade students developed their understandings of enslavement during a six-week social studies inquiry. Using Teaching Tolerance’s key concepts as my analytic framework, I analyzed the students’ pre- and post-concept maps and classwork to understand their learning. The findings show that students conceptualized enslavement as interactions between individuals—such as getting whipped by an overseer or forced to work by a master—but did not focus on the systemic nature of power and economic gain. Furthermore, students’ sensemaking about race was limited to naming enslaved people as African Americans without naming the enslavers as whites. These results point to the need for critical inquiries on enslavement in elementary schools that explicitly focus on systemic race/ism and white supremacy. I provide implications to support antiracist teaching about enslavement in K–5 social studies education and teacher education.

摘要

这项研究调查了 19 名三年级学生如何在为期六周的社会研究调查中发展他们对奴役的理解。使用教学容忍度的关键概念作为我的分析框架，我分析了学生的前后概念图和课堂作业，以了解他们的学习情况。研究结果表明，学生将奴役概念化为个体之间的互动——例如被监督鞭打或被主人强迫工作——但并未关注系统性权力的本质和经济利益。此外，学生对种族的理解仅限于将被奴役的人命名为非裔美国人，而没有将奴役者命名为白人。这些结果表明需要对小学中的奴役进行批判性调查，明确关注系统性种族/主义和白人至上主义。我提供了一些启示，以支持 K-5 社会研究教育和教师教育中关于奴役的反种族主义教学。