Critical Inquiry into Moments of Historical Change: Fostering Broader Understandings of Citizenship

Abstract This manuscript explores the power of using inquiry in a second-grade classroom to make students’ understanding of citizenship more complex. It describes an inquiry unit in which students studied primary sources, engaged with fiction and nonfiction children’s literature, and participated in interdisciplinary learning to further understand the Civil Rights Movement and the Underground Railroad. Through their understanding of these powerful historic events they came to new conceptions of what it means to be a good citizen. The paper not only describes the unit and how it played out in the classroom it also explores the tensions between teacher directed and student directed inquiry, the ways in which teachers can, and often must integrate English Language Arts into their inquiry in order to find time for it, and the necessity of trusting both students and teachers in their ability to guide their own learning in community. In addition, it describes ways of discussing racism with young learners in both a historical and contemporary context.