Creating Cultures of Pedagogical Caring: Empowering Student Voice Through Historical Inquiry

In high school settings, the social-emotional needs of students are often seen as a minor focus of attention while secondary curricula and standards are the major areas of interest. Considering recent events related to the pandemic, I suggest that the demand for attending to students’ social-emotional needs through demonstrations of caring is more necessary than ever. This study is designed to provide teachers with tools/data to support student-centered approaches in their classrooms that address students’ social-emotional needs, their interaction with pedagogical caring, and their engagement and learning through instructional approaches that elicit student agency and voice within a culture of caring. To test the impact of an emphasis on students’ social-emotional needs, this study focuses on the implementation of the Think & Link activity, which provides a forum for students’ agency as well as a context for students’ learning and use of historical thinking practices. Specifically, this study hopes to measure how attempts to engage student voice and agency through Think & Link result in a change in students’ perceptions of caring in my classroom, how students engage with the Think & Link process, and how that engagement was reflected in their learning and use of specific historical thinking practices. The results of this study find that the Think & Link activity served as a crucial nexus for change in students’ perceptions of caring in the classroom, and a development in their social emotional learning. On this basis, the implementation of student-centered activities, focused on increasing pedagogical caring, should be considered when supporting students at the secondary level