Suggesting a framework for students’ academic perspective-taking in secondary social science education

Abstract

Contributing to secondary students’ perspective-taking is one of the main purposes of social science education in school, closely related to the democratic mandate. Previous literature has distinguished between interpersonal and academic perspective-taking, both deriving from theories on social perspective-taking (Gehlbach et al., 2012; Sandahl, 2020). The purpose of this article is to argue for and discuss a framework for facilitating academic perspective-taking in secondary social science education. The framework combines an existing model of perspective-taking with recent deliberative and agonistic democratic theory to integrate disciplinary perspectives, students’ per­spectives and perspectives from broader social and political debates and processes. In presenting the framework, I argue that and discuss how perspectives from deliberative and agonistic theory can contribute to and have different implications for social science classroom practice in secondary school. To contribute with practical implications of the article’s theoretical contributions to social science didactics research, I outline some didactic opportunities for working with perspective-taking, focusing on the specific purpose of the activity.