A multicultural arts approach to re-imaging history: A social project with contextual essay

This research proposes a new pedagogy for the teaching of history through multicultural arts approaches, an approach which involves a marriage of the intellectual and emotional rigor of the integrated arts that can open and illuminate the subject. This study looks critically at how history and social studies are currently taught in K-12 public schools, insights based on my consulting with schools in various communities on issues of multicultural education and integrated arts, on the scholarship in the field of multicultural arts education, and on my teaching of graduate students across 24 states in the Creative Arts in Learning program at Lesley University.; My goal is to explore, through arts-based research methods, specifically filmmaking, diverse multicultural arts approaches to cultural history. In the film, Multicultural Arts Approaches to Re-imaging History, three women of color, all educators, reflect on their lives and their teaching; in a second part, I, a white teacher, work with students in a graduate course, Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Arts, History and Social Studies. Each of us brings different foci, depending on our cultural heritage and experience. The forum of the film points up varying perspectives on multicultural arts approaches in the study of history. I used the medium of film in order to create a new kind of "text," adding images, sound, thoughts and feelings to traditional printed texts. The film is intended for use with educators working in schools and community settings.; The contextual essay provides a basic framework for the film by reviewing the literature in the theory and practice of multicultural education and critical pedagogy; this literature is drawn from feminist writers, post-colonial theorists, and practitioners and theorists in the fields. I explore the power of marginalized voices, the variety of multicultural approaches to teaching history, the role of educators in the construction of knowledge, the power of assumptions and bias, and the concept of centering of historical narratives. I discuss several approaches to re-imaging history that are outside the traditional classroom and involve children and adults within the context of their communities.; The contextual essay also describes some multicultural arts approaches to the teaching of history, and looks at the work of several key artists who function as cultural historians, as well as teachers using integrated arts in schools. The contextual essay ends with a description of a new pedagogy, pulling together themes of integrated arts with multicultural education and critical pedagogy and holding up a vision of self-reflective teachers engaging with learners to re-image history.; In both essay and film, it is my ultimate goal to encourage new ways of thinking about history, and new ways of teaching it, to the end that both teachers and students might be illuminated and energized participants in the making of history.