Between aspiration and reality: New materialism and social studies education

Abstract

ABSTRACT This conceptual article uses new materialism, and its particular focus on material things, as a lens of analysis in social studies education in order to demonstrate alternative ways in which social studies education researchers and teachers might engage in inquiry. Historically, social studies curriculum and teaching have centered human agency and its domination of the material, natural world. However, this article argues that an attendance to things, and to the relational-material entanglements we find ourselves in, might guide us toward a reconsideration of how particular ideals and concepts are (and ought to be) represented in social studies curriculum, teaching, and learning. This article models how social studies analyses of material things in past and current events might take shape, exploring how natural things like Hurricane Maria and COVID-19, as well as human-made things like statues, parks, and textbooks, are both agentic and capable of impacting—diminishing or enhancing—the agency of human beings. We discuss how social studies teachers and teacher educators might enact such a focus in their classrooms, offering examples of how natural and human-made things might be integrated into social studies curriculum and teaching.