Visuals as a Tool to Incorporate Diversity into the Ontario Social Studies Curriculum

From my experience as a student, I had always found difficulty being interested in learning about social studies and history, which appears to be a common attitude in elementary schools. It was not until my undergraduate studies in art history that I began to understand the significance of historical concepts, though some teachers used visuals more effectively than others. Visual learning helps students engage in a variety of subjects. Thus, the purpose of this research was to discover how the use of visual resources can help bring diversity and multiple perspectives into the social studies and history classroom. This study adopts a qualitative approach and incorporates semi-structured interviews of two participants for the collection of its data. From my research findings, four key themes emerged; including content sensitivity, pedagogical strategies, accessibility to resources and the benefits of these visual resources within the social studies and/or history classroom