Canadian Social Studies 44(1) - Transformative History - Historic Space - Concept learning model

Oct 15, 2026

Until grand narratives are recognized as products and processes of power and privilege, they cannot deliver the transformational work education should provide. This paper argues that concept learning is a practical strategy for exploring and deconstructing power structured through grand national narratives. It presents a pedagogical model of Historic Space and supports the approach by analyzing students’ interactions with it in history education.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages13

Reading Time33 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Grand Narrative as a System

Thinking of Grand Narrative as a Structure

Concept learning

Historic Space

Canadian Social Studies 44(1) Cutrara Transformative History: The possibilities of Historic Space Samantha Cutrara, Faculty of Education, York University, Toronto, Ont. Abstract Until the grand narrative is recognized as a product and process of power and privilege it can never do the transformational work that it can, and should, do in education. In this paper, I argue that concept learning can be a practical strategy for exploring and deconstructing power that is structured through the grand narrative and manifested in the nation. In particular, I introduce my pedagogical model of Historic Space as a transformative tool for having these discussions and support this approach by discussing students’ interactions with it. Grand Narrative as a System Every good historian knows that history is not the past but merely a tool for making meaning from past events. By arbitrarily designating significance and highlighting the progression one significant person or event has from another, the past becomes a structure we call history. Although all types of history structure the past, grand national narratives are a particular type of structure that “explains the culture to itself and expresses its overriding purpose”(Francis, 1998, p. 1) . As a result, it is important to take the power of the grand narrative seriously and understand how its components work to establish and naturalize meaning in our contemporary world. Despite the best pedagogical intentions, shallow grand narratives filled with names and dates pulled from the past, deemed important for (re)telling, and situated within a mythical narrative structure, remain the most salient type of history learnt in schools. In these grand narratives,“the actual histories that people live, their complex interactions with others, are obscured and eventually forgotten”(Stanley, 2003, p. 38) . People in history become presented as “simplistic, one-dimensional, and truncated portraits” of themselves (Alridge, 2006, p. 663) and events in history become reduced to “their essential traits, their final meaning or their initial and final value”(Foucault, 1980, p. 154) . Following from postmodern and poststructural theory (see for example the work of Derrida, 1967 (2003); Foucault, 1980; Scott, 1997), I see political possibility in history education for using the grand narrative to (re)claim and deconstruct that which is left unsaid in popular history and in the process (re)invent that which is possible for the future. According to Paulo Freire, the key to an emancipatory structure of education is emphasizing that grand narratives, like history, are sources of“possibility and not as predetermination”(2004, pp. 59-60) . Thus, although postmodern and poststructural theory has been accused of“assaulting” the promise of history education (Barton, 2006; Seixas, 2000), these claims have failed to take into account how breaking open narratives can allow young people to imagine possibilities otherwise unavailable in their understanding of the future. 􀀂 Canadian Social Studies 44(1) Cutrara Thinking of the grand narrative as a structure makes it easier to separate the complexity of people and events in history from their one-dimensional representation in the grand narrative. Ferdinand de Saussure’s work on language as a semiological system is aptly suited for understanding how the grand narrative works as a system (1915 (2008)) because his articulation of“signs” provides parallels to the distilled representation of people and events in history. Just as words within language consist of the sign and the signified, which has both an actual meaning and a network of values that work to support and affirm the larger structure, people and events in the grand narrative consist of the name of the actual event that happened or the actual person that lived (the meaning) and the role the event or person plays in the grand narrative (the value) . For example, although Laura Second was a real person,

FAQs

为什么作者认为“宏大叙事”在教育中无法发挥变革作用？

作者认为，只有当宏大叙事被看作权力与特权的产物与过程时，它才可能在教育中产生真正的变革性作用。

作者如何在历史教育中运用“概念学习”来处理权力问题？

作者提出概念学习能作为策略，帮助学生探索并解构宏大叙事中所建构的权力，并把这些讨论落实到课堂情境。

“Historic Space”在文中扮演什么角色？

作者介绍了一个名为Historic Space的教学模型，用作促成相关讨论的变革工具，并通过分析学生与其互动来支撑该做法。

Oct 15, 2026

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