Teachers’ Text Selections and Explanations About Text Selection and Use in History/Social Studies

This study explores texts used in four 7th-11th grade teachers’ history/social studies lessons and these teachers’ perspectives about the texts. Specifically, data from interview and observation field notes were analyzed to determine (a) the number, types, and modes of texts teachers used in their lessons and (b) teachers’ perspectives on the what, why, and how of their text selections and uses in their lessons. The data demonstrated a relation between the number, types, and modes of texts teachers used in their lessons and the focus of teachers’ explanations about text selection and uses. The results of this study suggest that the teachers’ textual decisions in their lessons may relate to their reasoning about syntactic structures of the discipline of history. In particular, the extent to which and how teachers framed literacy as an integrated tool to engage students in historical inquiry varied among teachers. This variation was related to the number, types, and modes of texts they used in their lessons