Description
New Possibilities for the Past: Shaping History Education in Canada edited by Penney Clark, associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at UBC offers a collection of 17 scholarly essays about a comprehensive research agenda both to help students at all levels learn about the past, and, more importantly, to understand how we construct history from its infinite possibilities. In this volume, museum educators, secondary school teachers, and leading and emerging historians and history educators define a new agenda for history education research by shifting the focus from content to method, from what should be included in narratives about the past to how to think about and teach history. They document the state of history education theory, research, and practice and consider the implications of research for classrooms from kindergarten to graduate school and in other contexts, including museums, virtual environments, and public institutional settings. They also consider the perspectives of Indigenous peoples, the citizens of Quebec, and advocates of citizenship education. One essay included in the volume is Teaching History from an Indigenous Perspective: Four Winding Paths up the Mountain by Michael Marker. This inclusion of a significant paper that addresses four themes of Indigenous historical consciousness makes this volume a ground-breaking resource.