Students often approach history class as though it is exclusively about memorizing facts: names like Emilio Aguinaldo and Calvin Coolidge, dates like December 7, 1941, and June 6, 1944, events like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. But history is really a form of storytelling. Though historical “facts” can be important tools for building an understanding of the past, they are steeped in culture and perspective. Whose calendar is used to determine “when” something occurred? Whose values shape the educational standards that determine which facts students must know? Looking at historical developments and experiences from multiple perspectives is essential for building a fuller, more inclusive historical understanding.
In November, my colleague Jessie Hill Gillooly and I had the opportunity to present on the topic of multiperspectivity in history at the 2024 National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Annual Conference in Boston. Multiperspectivity is a historical approach that necessitates the consideration of multiple perspectives around a given topic, recognizing that different individuals and groups can have vastly different experiences. This approach can be brought to classrooms, where students work to gather and examine evidence that represents diverse points of view, and put together a story about what happened and the meanings behind it.
In teaching students how to think and work like historians, problems arise when students are only exposed to one story. The dominant narrative of US history is that of white, Christian, Anglo Americans. Marginalized groups are excluded, often intentionally, or included as side notes. When they only encounter a limited number of stories, students do not learn how to question a story, how to see themselves in a story that is not familiar to their experiences or the experiences of their families, or how to live in a world where everyone’s stories do not match up.
Teachers can expose students to multiple ways of thinking about a historical topic through a variety of approaches. In our presentation, we focused on three different frameworks that educators can utilize for showing students diverse perspectives on a particular subject. First, they can ensure that counternarratives are examined throughout the school year to ensure that students look at different experiences around the course topics. Second, they can present the students with secondary source interpretations that look at history through different lenses—such as through critical theory, a patriotic lens, or a political history approach—and train them to identify the perspective of the author. Finally, they can uplift micronarratives—stories that focus on the experiences of individuals, including the students themselves—to balance the “big picture” history that most students are exposed to through traditional history classes and resources.
As part of the diversity studies team at Gibbs Smith Education, Jessie and I have worked on ethnic studies books, such as Mosaic, Voices, and Movement, that highlight counternarratives and center the experiences of people from marginalized groups. We do this by partnering with scholars and educators from the communities themselves to write and review the lessons in the books. By exposing students to diverse experiences and helping them see themselves and their communities as worthy of study, ethnic studies courses support student engagement and performance.
As humans, we may be inclined to look for that one “correct” story that tells us the “truth” about a group, event, or development. We contribute to polarization when we suggest that there can be only one story or experience that is true. By supporting students in their study of multiple perspectives, we can help them wrestle with the complicated nature of history, where it isn’t just “good guys versus bad guys” or events that should be scorned or celebrated. The human experience is complex, and multiperspectivity is one way of recognizing this complexity and supporting students as they navigate diverse, often contentious, narratives in history and in the world around them.
