Exploring Eleanor Roosevelt’s labor advocacy using primary and secondary sources

Abstract

Purpose Education initiatives have increased expectations of students’ non-fiction reading and text-based writing within history, social studies and other curricula. Teachers must locate age-appropriate curricular materials and implement discipline-specific pedagogy to guide students’ history literacy, historical thinking and historical argumentation. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach Students are guided on an inquiry into an underemphasized element of a historically significant figure’s life. Eleanor Roosevelt’s labor and poverty advocacies generate comparably less attention by historians and trade book authors than her work with civil rights, human rights and international diplomacy. Findings Students are positioned to scrutinize primary and secondary sources using differentiated optics relevant to each source type. History literacy and historical thinking strategies ground students’ analyses. After extracting meaningful content from diverse sources, students are prompted to engage in text-based writing to articulate their newly developed understandings. Diverse elements of revision bolster students’ historical argumentation. Practical implications Close reading, critical thinking and text-based writing are joined throughout the guided inquiry. Originality/value The previously unused texts and original tasks are intended for middle school classrooms. These sources and strategies integrate different elements of history literacy, historical thinking and historical argumentation throughout the inquiry.