Perspectives of Historical Narrative in High School Social Studies: A Descriptive Design

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to describe high school social studies teachers’ views of the use and value of historical narrative in a suburban school district in southwestern Maryland. It is not known how high school social studies teachers describe the use and value of historical narrative (both fiction and nonfiction) as a reading instructional support in a high school social studies classroom. The theoretical foundations of the study included reader response theory and case-based reasoning theory. Research question one is how do high school teachers describe how the use and value of historical narrative (both fiction and nonfiction) increases student learning of social studies content? Research question two asks how do high school teachers describe how the use and value of historical narrative (both fiction and nonfiction) helps to connect historical figures to increase student learning of history? The sample consisted of 17 high school social studies teachers with more than one year of teaching experience in a large suburban school district in southwestern Maryland. The questionnaire portion of the study included 13 participants, the two focus groups had a total of nine participants, and there were four teacher observations conducted. Thematic analysis, with the use of a preliminary codebook, revealed the following themes in the data: (a) teachers describe historical narrative as beneficial to teach vocabulary, facts mandated by the district curriculum, and skills used by historians (b) teachers describe historical narrative as a way to elicit an emotional response to social studies material