"Glossed over and missing": Preservice teachers learn about slavery in Canada. (2nd October 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wright-Maley, Cory
• Is Part Of: Theory and research in social education. Volume 50:Number 4(2022)
• Page Start: 581
• Page End: 606
• Publication Date: 2022-10-02
• Subjects: Abolitionist teaching -- Black history -- Canadian national identity -- historical consciousness -- slavery -- social studies methods -- teacher education; Social sciences -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; 300.71
• DOI: 10.1080/00933104.2022.2130121
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0093-3104

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The more than 200 years of chattel slavery in Canada is an example of the country's occluded history predicated on structural racism. This study of preservice elementary teachers in a social studies methods course helps to reveal how the history of Black enslavement in Canada has been effectively erased from the national consciousness. Using a symbolic interactionism/grounded theory methodology, I seek to make meaning from more than 70 preservice teachers' written responses to a reading on slavery and abolition in Canada. This study's findings help reveal some of the challenges to, and possibilities for, interrogating historical consciousness and national identity narratives as a process of learning within the contexts of methods courses.