Geena Kim Dünya Tarihi

Theory & Research in Social Education
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utrs20
“Because the United States is a great melting

pot”: How students make sense of topics in world
history
Geena Kim
To cite this article: Geena Kim (2023) “Because the United States is a great melting pot”: How
students make sense of topics in world history, Theory & Research in Social Education, 51:3,
372-407, DOI: 10.1080/00933104.2022.2162466
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2022.2162466
Published online: 20 Jan 2023.
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THEORY & RESEARCH IN SOCIAL EDUCATION
2023, VOL. 51, NO. 3, 372–407
https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2022.2162466
“Because the United States is a great melting pot”: How

students make sense of topics in world history
Geena Kim
Korea Institute of Curriculum and Evaluation
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This study is an exploration of how U.S. middle school students inter Prior conceptions;
acted with different topics in world history, and how their specific sociocultural contexts;
understandings of topics were connected to both sociocultural and students’ interaction with
history; teachers’ instruction;
instructional contexts. I observed two world history classrooms in
world history
a Midwestern Catholic school for 10 months and conducted task-
based group interviews on 6 topics with 66 students. Findings indicate
that students interacted differently with different topics, and their
understandings of the given topics aligned with prior conceptions,
situated in their sociocultural contexts, and teacher instruction in
a complicated process. At times, the teachers’ instruction accommo
dated students’ prior conceptions, strengthening their misunderstand
ings. Certain instructional strategies also evoked students’ awareness
of their current contextual values, such as democracy, human rights,
and nonviolence, hindering them from rationally understanding dif
ferent contexts in history. There were times, however, when the tea
chers’ intentional instruction overshadowed prevailing discourses,
allowing students to successfully construct new understandings.
From these findings, I argue that to be prepared for the world of
their future, U.S. students need to go beyond the parameters of their
sociocultural contexts and develop a comprehensive understanding,
both nationally and globally, of the world.
Given the increase in globally interconnected situations, students today are more
exposed to diversity than ever before and must develop expanded perspectives by
studying a wide range of people, societies, and cultures. The National Curriculum
Standards for Social Studies (National Council for the Social Studies, n.d.) stated that
the goal of social studies education is promoting civic competence, which comprises
the knowledge, skills, and commitment to democracy that enable students to sustain
democratic ways of life and participate as members of a global community. Relatedly,
a consensus has been reached among historians (e.g., Bender, 2006; Bentley, 2007;
Dirlik, 2000; Manning, 2003; Nash et al., 2000; Stearns, 2006) and social studies
educators (e.g., Gaudelli, 2003; Girard & Harris, 2013; Harris & Bain, 2010; Marino,
2010; Myers, 2006) that learning world history is important for becoming global
citizens. They acknowledge that students need to extend their skills in evaluating
critical global issues, develop multiple perspectives derived from different cultural
vantage points, and hopefully, learn to appreciate these differences.
CONTACT Geena Kim [email protected]; [email protected] Korea Institute of Curriculum and

Evaluation, #422, Kyohak-ro 8, Jincheon-gun, Chungbuk 27873, Republic of Korea.
© 2023 College and University Faculty Assembly of National Council for the Social Studies
THEORY & RESEARCH IN SOCIAL EDUCATION 373
Despite the agreed-upon value of world history, many empirical studies on students’
historical understanding have suggested inherent contradictions between the purpose of
world history curriculum and students’ approaches to history (An, 2009; Myers et al., 2015;
Terzian & Yeager, 2007). Specifically, scholars have shown that students feel a direct
connection to their nation’s past (Barton, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c; Barton & Levstik, 1998,
2004; VanSledright, 2008), as well as ethnic membership (Barton, 2005, 2010; Bedolla, 2000,
2000; Epstein, 1998; Howard, 2004; Levy, 2014, 2017). When learning history, identification
is highly likely to be the narrow focus through which students perceive people, places, and
events of the past (Barton, 2009); however, the curricular purposes of learning world history
are oriented toward helping students understand their own affairs at a removed perspective
and within a broad context (Bentley, 2007). To achieve these teaching goals, history
educators need to focus more on the conceptions and orientations that students bring to
world history learning.
Moreover, according to insights from cognitive theories of learning, knowledge is
constructed from what students already know and believe (Bransford et al., 2000).
Students come to the classroom with a wealth of experiences, opinions, skills, beliefs, and
concepts that provide a starting point for constructing new knowledge. Especially in science
education, it is well understood that students’ prior conceptions are critical in determining
the outcomes of their learning (Morrison & Lederman, 2003). Put differently, when prior
conceptions are ignored, it is hard for students to engage with new knowledge without
resulting in misunderstandings. Thus, teachers must pay particular attention to students’
biased or unsubstantiated beliefs and incomplete understandings of concepts. In terms of
history, many different conceptions—for instance, students’ specific content knowledge,
knowledge to structure content, and ideas of judging justice and injustice—could work as
starting points for new knowledge (G. Kim, 2021). As a premise for appropriate instruction,
history educators need to grasp what students want to learn about world history and how
they process the knowledge they encounter. From there, teachers can challenge students’
prior conceptions and build on their interests.
In the United States, although world history curricula have expanded in U.S. schools
(Bain & Shreiner, 2005; Martin et al., 2011), the history instruction that middle school
students receive has been predominantly focused on national history, with the history
curriculum explicitly or implicitly emphasizing development of national identification
(Barton, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c; Barton & Levstik, 1998, 2004; VanSledright, 2008). Under
this circumstance, most students might not negotiate shifts in perspective and instead apply
their familiar purposes for learning national history to learning world history, resulting in
the latter being remodeled to fit the former. Grounded in the idea that prior conceptions
can be a starting point for appropriate instruction, as well as the contradiction between
curricular purpose and students’ actual approach to history, the present study features
observations of and interviews with students in world history classrooms with the aim of
investigating how they understand topics from world history.
Students’ interactions with history

Over the last few decades, scholarship on students’ historical understanding has investi
gated how students interact with history rather than what students know about the past.
Studies have pointed to students’ sociocultural and instructional contexts as critical factors
374 G. KIM
that frame their understandings of the past (Epstein & Salinas, 2018; Halvorsen et al., 2016;
Levy, 2014, 2017; Lévesque & Croteau, 2022; Yoder, 2020). Following this line of scholar
ship, this literature review focuses on the different ways students interact with history, the
underlying factors driving their ideas, and the particularities related to these factors.
Building a sense of group identity

Among the many different ways students relate to history, the most common is through
identification with historical topics from their national, ethnic, and religious contexts, and
this identification shapes their particular historical understandings. When learning history in
and outside of school, students often connect to their national past, and they consider stories
of their national past to be what makes history a meaningful subject (Barton & Levstik, 1998;
Cornbleth, 2002; G. Kim, 2018; Levstik & Groth, 2005; VanSledright & Brophy, 1992;
VanSledright, 1997, 2008; Yeager et al., 2002). Even in discussions of moral controversies
around the world, U.S. students do not normally transcend their national identity for a global
one and instead make sense of multiple citizenship responsibilities by emphasizing loyalty to
their nation (Myers et al., 2015). In addition to national identity, several studies have shown
that students form strong ethnic identity (Levy, 2014, 2017) and religious identity (Schweber,
2006; Spector, 2007) through studying history and typically have attributed greater signifi
cance to people and events connected with their own heritage. Even within the same country,
the messages students receive from historical topics may vary according to their ethnicity and
religion. Constructing a sense of group identity is something students commonly do with
history, which suggests that rather than passively storing historical information, they actively
construct meaning with it by connecting it to their own context.
While connecting to their group’s past, however, students often create distortions in their
historical understanding and ignore multiple interpretations of issues and complex realities
(Barton & Levstik, 1998; Seixas, 2000; VanSledright, 1997; Wills, 2011). For instance,
U.S. students often look for direct connections with their national past by relying on
internalized overarching national narratives such as “freedom and progress” (Barton &
Levstik, 1998), “imperfect but best” (Cornbleth, 2002), and “quest for freedom” (Wertsch,
1998), and these narratives are likely to wield power in their structuring of historical knowl
edge. These themes encourage students to look for evidence of forward, linear progress from
an inferior past to a superior present and an even better future. Similarly, research on
Protestant students showed that they drew on Christian narratives in making sense of the
Holocaust as a supernatural struggle of good against evil or a story of redemption, which led
to a view of the Holocaust as a tragic but necessary part of God’s plan for the world
(Schweber, 2006; Spector, 2007). As filtering devices, entrenched mental frameworks might
cause students to exclude pertinent information and focus narrowly on content that confirms
preexisting conceptions and beliefs while excluding or distorting content that contradicts
them. Thus, when they encounter information that challenges their existing beliefs, students
are likely to retrofit it to their existing schemas rather than change their beliefs.
Forming a moral response

When students approach history, they morally respond to historical events. Several studies
have suggested that students continuously navigate what they believe was right and wrong
in the past, positively evaluating individuals who enacted positive changes and criticizing
unfair situations. Rather than simply knowing about the past, they reason about its justices
and injustices. For example, in the United States, students critically evaluated their White
ancestors’ treatment of Native Americans and African Americans (Barton & Levstik, 1998,
2004; Wills, 1996, 2011), as well as gender discrimination in the past (Barton & Levstik,
1998, 2004). Similarly, in New Zealand, students positively evaluated the women’s suffrage
movement because it enabled women to gain the right to vote (Levstik, 1999).
However, students’ various moral responses raise the important issue of the extent to
which group interests influence moral judgment. When judging historical events, students’
reasoning is limited to prior conceptions influenced by their own contexts. For instance,
White students in New Zealand showed a reluctance to empathize with the Maori in past
territorial conflicts with their White ancestors because the outcomes were directly relevant
to their own present interests (Levstik, 2001). In Northern Ireland, female students were
more inclined to morally respond to gender issues than male students (Barton, 2005).
Similarly, Korean students avoided criticizing violent actions committed by Korean soldiers
during the Vietnam War, but did not hesitate to criticize similar actions carried out by
Japanese soldiers during the colonial period in Korea (G. Kim, 2018). These studies imply
that students reacted more sensitively to their group’s interest and struggled to criticize their
ancestors’ actions because they belonged to the same national or ethnic group.
Drawing historical lessons

Although professional historians often emphasize the particularity of historical events
(Oakeshott, 1983), many students undertake the action of looking for similarities and
differences between the past and the present and between one past and another past, an
active interaction that students find valuable and frequently cite as a main reason to study
history (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Boix-Mansilla, 2000; Grant, 2003; VanSledright, 1997). For
instance, U.S. students argued that Americans should learn lessons from the Vietnam War,
such as the realization that the United States is not an invincible power and that they should
not repeat the mistakes of previous generations but, instead, make wiser decisions in the
future (Barton & Levstik, 2004). Also in a world history context, Boix-Mansilla (2000) found
that students used their understanding of Nazi Germany to explain the massacres in
Rwanda, recognize historical similarities and differences between them, and apply historical
modes of thinking to generate new hypotheses about the Rwandan genocide. These studies
imply that with their teachers’ guidance, students can successfully make historical analogies
between different contexts and apply historical lessons to understand current issues.
It is reasonable to assume that applying historical knowledge to their own world can
equip students to consider the outcomes, intended or unintended, of actions in the present.
However, Barton and Levstik (2004) warned that historical lessons can be selectively drawn,
especially to conform to students’ own contexts, making their misuse highly possible. If only
some realities in historical events are focused on, it is possible to exclude or distort historical
contextualization, manipulate the lessons learned, and even justify injustice in current
society. Because of fundamental historical differences, it is not easy to figure out which
analogies are more or less appropriate. Applying historical analogies can be an effective way
to understand contemporary issues, but because of the danger of using only partial knowl
edge and oversimplifying contextual knowledge, educators should be careful that their
376 G. KIM
students examine analogies critically and recognize the limitations of analogical reasoning
and the hazards of having only a partial understanding of the past (Barton & Levstik, 2004).
Understanding others
Students sometimes use history to understand and contextualize differences among people,
societies, and cultures. According to VanSledright (1997), forming this rationale requires
the ability to place oneself in the position and context of another, an intellectual feat just
beyond the cognitive ability of younger students. However, students can develop this
purpose and ability to understand differences if supported by curricular and instructional
approaches, which in turn are influenced by larger sociocultural backgrounds. In Northern
Ireland, the curriculum encouraged the learning of history as an opportunity to understand
others’ ideas and contextualize differences (Barton, 2005, 2010), reflecting the country’s
background of opposing political/religious perspectives. The history curriculum put value
on understanding differences as a way to alleviate these political and religious tensions.
Thus, students often considered it important to understand others whose identity was
different from their own and assigned greater meaning to knowing others than to building
their own identity (Barton, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c).
Similarly, several studies in the United States have shown that when history teachers
explicitly aim to evoke historical empathy, students extend understanding to different
peoples and cultures and eventually realize the importance of such understanding (e.g.,
Brooks, 2008, 2011; Endacott, 2010, 2014; Endacott & Brooks, 2018; Kohlmeier, 2006). With
instruction on empathetic understanding, many make an effort to understand otherness
and issues not central to their own individual identity or beliefs. Endacott (2014) found that
U.S. students gradually opened their minds and acknowledged “the importance of recog
nizing others” through learning history (p. 28). Students were able to surpass their habitual
mind-sets with explicit guidance, and learning about different perspectives is another way
history can be relevant to students’ lives in an era of globalism. In world history classrooms,
Kohlmeier (2006) and Brooks (2011) focused on both cognitive and affective understanding
of others and expanded their discussion to ways that historical empathy can help develop
students’ understanding of diversity in current society. Eventually, students displayed the
ability to recognize different perspectives at varying levels of sophistication. These two
studies send important messages. Even though a historical topic represents a remote period
and place, students can care about what people were experiencing. When guided to
investigate multiple voices and develop historical empathy, students can recognize the
value of understanding the perspectives of others.
Taken together, previous studies clearly suggest that students do not simply absorb but
actively interact with historical knowledge, and these interactions shape their understand
ing of particular historical events. These interactions with history are not sui generis but,
rather, situated in sociocultural, curricular, and instructional contexts. Thus, students’
interactions with historical topics can take different forms. With regard to students’
historical understanding, several gaps and issues can be identified in the literature. As
Girard and Harris (2018) noted, “There are few world history studies focused on students
and classrooms” (p. 257); many studies of world history education have been inclined
toward discussions of Eurocentric approaches (e.g., Stearns, 2010), standards and textbook
analysis (e.g., Bolgatz & Marino, 2014; Y. C. Kim et al., 2013), and word history teachers’
ideas and conceptions (e.g., Harris & Bain, 2010; Lee & Harris, 2020; Saada, 2013).
Furthermore, most studies of students’ historical understandings are focused on histories
with which students identify, but studies of students’ interactions with histories they did not
identify with are rare. In Levy (2014, 2017), the author focused on Hmong immigrant
students’ thinking about the Vietnam War, Jewish students’ thinking about the Holocaust,
and Chinese-heritage students’ thinking about the Cultural Revolution. Her research
showed that both having a multiheritage family context had an impact on how the students
regarded their heritage history. In the United States, although the topics of the Holocaust
and the Cultural Revolution are categorized as world history (Cafarella & Bohan, 2012;
Lindquist, 2009), they are closely linked to the family backgrounds of the participating
students. Since the students identified with these histories, Levy’s content areas may not
have had an appreciably different impact from national history. Despite many studies about
students’ interactions with history, we do not have empirical knowledge about their under
standings of histories that are remote in time and place and outside their identification with
particular content areas. Thus, it is important to investigate how students interact with
a variety of topics in world history and how these understandings are similar or different
across topics.
Conceptual framework
Current theories of learning hold that students construct rather than receive new knowledge
and understandings (Bransford et al., 2000). The idea of learners as blank slates has been
replaced by the belief that students bring to the classroom a wealth of experiences, opinions,
skills, beliefs, and concepts. Even when students listen to lectures, they actively construct
meaning by connecting new information to prior conceptions (Schwartz & Bransford,
1998), which provides a framework through which the new information is interpreted. In
this sense, students’ prior conceptions play a crucial role in how they remember, reason,
solve problems, and acquire new knowledge (Piaget, 1950/1954). The knowledge and (mis)
conceptions students bring have a major influence on their new learning, and this paradigm
shift in student learning theories has a particular importance in history education
(VanSledright, 1997). With the emphasis on existing knowledge as the starting point for
constructing new learning, many researchers have become interested in how students think
about history, an area of active investigation in recent decades (Barton, 2008).
Importantly, mental functioning, including active use of prior conceptions, does not
occur independently (Cole, 1996; Lave, 1991; Rogoff, 1990) but is shaped by dynamic
interactions with sociocultural contexts. From this perspective, historical understanding
does not simply mean acquiring knowledge about the past, but refers to an action in which
students engage in interpretation of historical topics within acquired frameworks (Wertsch,
1998). As individuals are socially, culturally, and historically situated, individual mental
functioning fundamentally has social origins, and new knowledge is constructed in these
sociocultural contexts that are central to human development and experience. Students
bring their own unique sociocultural lens and historical orientation to bear as they confirm,
extend, and challenge available understandings about the past (Levstik & Barton, 2008).
Thus, the relation between historical understanding and sociocultural context can be
378 G. KIM
explained by the social nature of human cognition, which affects how individuals create
meaning (Wertsch, 1998).
Relatedly, Nordgren (2016) theorized the concept of use of history, which shares the idea
that students’ sociocultural contexts are involved in their understandings of historical
topics. Use of history means that, in a given context, people operationalize historical
knowledge for many reasons, such as explaining the surrounding world (Zanazanian,
2015), constituting identities (Anderson, 2006; Smith, 1994), and changing society
(Karlsson & Zander, 2004). In particular, Nordgren regarded use of history as an act of
communication, a process in time, and an interactive, ongoing, changing, multifaceted
measure involving specific sociocultural contexts. As an example, he presented Assyrian/
Syriac diaspora culture, in which the experiences of Christian migrators in Muslim com
munities were narrated differently depending on the period, regardless of factual informa
tion: In the 1960s, narratives of their migratory experiences centered on a great and ancient
heritage, but in the 1980s, with growing international interest in the Holocaust, these
narratives were replaced by ones about survival and restoration. From the use-of-history
perspective, particular sociocultural contexts affect how people create meaning from his
torical events. In this sense, the past and present are interrelated in contextualized narra
tives. In terms of students’ historical understanding, as actors situated in their own
sociocultural contexts, students interact with their present social needs by communicating
through history rather than simply knowing about the past (Nordgren, 2016).
Sociocultural contexts may bring about different patterns in students’ historical under
standing. In the United States, European American students would be likely to interact
differently with Chinese history, which is remote in terms of time, location, and contexts,
than with British history, which has both direct and indirect connections to U.S. history.
The diverse topics of world history cannot be grouped into a single subject-matter category
because the meanings of each topic have different historical and cultural origins, as well as
particular connections to students’ backgrounds. Extending this idea, the present study
investigates how students in a Catholic school in the United States who were learning world
history for the first time interacted with multiple topics from world history and their
reasoning with regard to these interactions. Two research questions guided the analysis:
In what ways do students interact with different topics in world history? and How do these
interactions shape students’ specific understandings of topics in world history?
Method
Research context and participants
This study took place over a period of nine months during the 2016–2017 academic year
and employed a qualitative approach. Participants were 66 students aged 11–14 years from
four world history classrooms—two sixth-grade classes taught by Mr. Erickson and two
seventh-grade classes taught by Mr. Lewis—in St. Peter’s School in the Midwestern United
States (all names are pseudonyms). The school and four classrooms were selected on
a convenience basis. Despite the disadvantages that convenience sampling may pose
(Patton, 2002), it was compatible with the goals of this study because I intended to provide
a picture of how and why students in these classrooms understood world history topics in
particular ways rather than generalizing from this study to a target population.
A Catholic school located in a college town, St. Peter’s states that its provision of
education promotes “the development of world citizens who understand the diversity of
God’s people.” Following this mission, all students were exposed to explicit Christian
messages at school. In class, for instance, the two teachers would often mention that the
students, as Christians at St. Peter’s, needed to share their privilege, love, and peace with
others. Students were also broadly exposed to Catholic practices, such as Mass, and learned
of Catholic spirits from the priests.
Because it was a private school, the teachers at St. Peter’s had more autonomy, and the
two teachers in this study stated that they could follow academic and curriculum standards
selectively. Based on the state’s curriculum standards, sixth-grade students were expected to
cover all time periods in the European and American continents, and seventh-grade
students covered all time periods in the Asian and African continents. However, each
teacher chose five or six units of world history to cover per academic year because both
believed it would be better for students to learn about a few topics more deeply than to
superficially cover all topics. The rationale behind Mr. Erickson’s selection of topics was
their relation to the current world. Mr. Lewis usually referred to materials from the Stanford
History Education Group and chose topics he thought would be interesting for students’
writing projects. In terms of instruction, the teachers differed in strategy. Mr. Erickson often
seemed to bring history to life for the students. He usually began the class by showing short
video clips about current events, such as climate issues, the presidential election, and
conflicts in the Middle East. He always tried to show students what was currently happening
in the places they were learning about and hoped students would think about the relation
ship between past and present. Meanwhile, Mr. Lewis believed it was important for students
to read like a historian and thus emphasized the value of document analysis in learning
history. In every unit, students spent a lot of time reading and analyzing multiple primary
and secondary sources and discussing different viewpoints with their peers before writing
their own historical arguments of five to seven paragraphs.
Most students attending St. Peter’s were White U.S. citizens, and many came from
families who had lived in the city for generations. Out of the four classes, 40 sixth graders
and 26 seventh graders were selected for interviews on a voluntary basis. At various points
during the interviews, I asked students about their religion, ethnicity, and educational
experiences of history and found they were mostly homogeneous in terms of nationality,
ethnicity, and religion. Overall, the participating students were categorized as follows: 66
sixth and seventh graders, all identifying as Christian; 34 girls and 32 boys; 2 of mixed origin
(Asian and European), 3 of Asian origin, 3 of Latino/a origin, 46 of European origin, and 12
of unknown origin (including 10 students who were White and did not know their
ancestry); 65 were U.S. citizens (who had previously learned about U.S. history in school)
and one was a non-U.S. citizen (see Appendix A for demographic details).
Instrument and procedures

This study consisted of interviews with students and classroom observations. As the
primary method of data collection, I conducted semi-structured, task-based group inter
views, an elicitation technique that made the research process more transparent and
authentic and produced richer data by bringing participants’ tacit conceptions to the surface
(Barton, 2015). Because visual images help initiate and facilitate conversations for those
380 G. KIM
who have little experience in talking with researchers, a simple but thought-provoking task
was chosen as a warm-up to help students feel comfortable when responding to more
abstract questions (Levstik & Barton, 2008). I first chose three broad interview topics for
each grade. For the sixth graders, I selected ancient Greece and Rome, Mesoamerican
civilizations, and the French Revolution, and for the seventh graders, I chose ancient
Egypt, the origin and development of Islam, and the Mongolian Empire. I chose these
topics because the teachers had allotted significant time to the units, and I observed the
units in full. Additionally, I considered different civilizations from different continents and
time periods because students are usually expected to understand various lives and cultures
in world history. Next, I selected approximately 8 to 13 captioned images of specific events
relevant to the selected interview topics with the expectation they would inspire active
participation. At this point, I took the teachers’ curriculum and instruction into account
(see Appendix B for image captions). However, it should be noted that despite the
advantages of these elicitation techniques (Barton, 2015), the selected images were limited
to the topics covered in class, so it is possible the images reinforced the teachers’ instruction
and influenced students’ reasoning.
Each interview was conducted within a week after students learned about a given topic.
Each group of students was asked to imagine together how they would explain the assigned
topic to others not familiar with it, to choose three images that best illustrated the topic, and
to explain their reasons for their selections. In this visual-based task, my focus was on
students’ explanations rather than their selections, as their justifications might suggest how
they understood the assigned topics. This task was followed by more general questions,
including why world history is important to learn and how it is different from national
history (see Appendix C). The protocols for the interviews were carefully written to address
the research questions for this study. For instance, as this research began with the idea that
students would interact differently with world history than with national history, I included
questions concerning whether or why they needed to learn world history. These questions
supplemented and clarified the students’ explanations for their image selections.
Because students’ talk is generally more elaborate when they react to each other’s ideas
than when they answer an interviewer’s questions (Levstik & Barton, 2008), the students
were interviewed in groups and were relatively free to choose what they wanted to talk
about. After each round of interviews, the groups were partially or wholly changed so none
consisted of the same members. Each group consisted of two or three students on average,
although on a couple of occasions, groups had as many as four students. Specific interview
topics and students’ demographic information are summarized in Table 1.
Classroom observations were an important complement to the interviews. I visited
Mr. Erickson’s classrooms approximately 100 times and Mr. Lewis’s classrooms approxi
mately 120 times throughout the school year. While observing the classrooms, I took
detailed handwritten notes on information such as learning objectives, driving questions,
and the teachers’ particular comments on historical events and figures. Additionally, I took
notes on students’ classroom activities, including the specific content of their projects or
assignments, their responses to teachers’ questions, and their own questions to teachers.
The chief advantage of the classroom observations was that they provided me with points
of reference for my interview preparations by acquainting me with the environment of the
phenomenon being investigated (Merriam, 2009). In particular, the observations helped me
group students for more effective interviews as I took into consideration my observations of
Table 1. Interview topics and participants.

Number of
Set Topic Grade students Grouping Gender Ethnic origin Citizenship
A Ancient Greece 6 21 7 groups of 3 9 girls 4 non-identifiable 20 U.S. citizens
and Rome 12 boys 2 Asian 1 non-U.S. citizen
15 European
B Mesoamerican 6 21 7 groups of 3 12 girls 6 non-identifiable 21 U.S. citizens
civilizations 9 boys 2 Latino/a
13 European
C French 6 28 4 groups of 3 15 girls 6 non-identifiable 27 U.S. citizens
Revolution 4 groups of 4 13 boys 2 Asian 1 non-U.S. citizen
20 European
D Ancient Egypt 7 12 3 groups of 2 6 girls 3 non-identifiable 12 U.S. citizens
2 groups of 3 6 boys 1 mixed
8 European
E The origin and 7 12 6 groups of 2 8 girls 2 non-identifiable 12 U.S. citizens
development of 4 boys 2 mixed
Islam 8 European
F Mongolian 7 12 6 groups of 2 6 girls 1 Asian 12 U.S. citizens
Empire 6 boys 1 Latino/a
10 European
power relations in the classroom. For instance, during the first round of interviews, there
was a group of three students of which two dominated the conversation while the third
simply agreed with their opinions. Afterward, I closely observed the third student’s class
room activity and found they had a close friend who was also not active in class. I grouped
these two students with one active student for the next interview to avoid having two active
students dominate the conversation, and I found the conversations were more effective.
Classroom observations also allowed me to formulate effective interview questions based
on substantive content, enabling students to specify their ideas more easily (Levstik &
Barton, 2008). As people reason in more sophisticated ways about material they are familiar
with (Levstik & Barton, 2008), combining the interviews with observations allowed me to
explore the students’ understanding more thoroughly. Using my observations, I designed
the interviews to cover specific topics I knew the students had learned about in class and was
able to encourage them to think about issues more deeply than when I asked general
questions. For instance, Mr. Erickson usually explained historical events by comparing
them with current U.S. and world affairs, so I included a few images with which students
would be familiar, such as images of traditional cuisine from the Mesoamerican region of
Mexico, to inspire students to actively talk about their ideas. Because Mr. Lewis emphasized
the importance of analyzing sources and making historical arguments, I included a few
images that had been used as historical sources in class. He had covered at length various
war tactics in the Mongolian Empire, so I also included more captioned images of war,
cavalry, or weapons for the corresponding interviews.
Another advantage of the observations was that I was able to connect students’ responses
to the teachers’ instruction based on the detailed handwritten notes I took. Classroom
observations provided context for understanding participants’ language and nuances in
meaning, as well as opportunities to capture activities outside the interviews (Patton, 2002).
For instance, when the sixth-grade students unexpectedly mentioned U.S. history and
society in talking about the past, I was able to contextualize their responses with the
knowledge that Mr. Erickson frequently drew on current U.S. society to explain the past
382 G. KIM
world. Also, when some of the seventh-grade students approached the topics of the
Mongolian Empire and Ancient Egypt in starkly different ways, my classroom observations
guided me to reach the basic understanding that their approaches were closely aligned with
Mr. Lewis’s guiding questions.
Data analysis
I engaged in qualitative inductive analysis of the students’ explanations to find frequent,
dominant, and significant themes (Creswell, 2007). I began the process of analysis by
reading through the entire body of interview data. In the first round of coding, I looked
for the learning purposes that students assigned to the given topics because their reasoning
would drive their interactions with the topics. I found that students approached particular
topics with different purposes, such as grasping the origins of current societies, under
standing different cultures, learning useful lessons from the past, and morally evaluating the
past. Based on these themes, I named the first set of coding categories as “To know my
origin,” “Not to be self-centered,” “To learn historical lessons,” “To judge moral issues,” and
“Others.”
After completing the first round of coding with all transcripts, I broke down the initial
categories into more detailed and substantive categories. In this stage, I tried to catch the
nuances in each response. For instance, the expressed intention of avoiding a self-centered
mind-set by learning world history was subcategorized into more specific approaches such
as “To understand different lifestyles,” “Not to have stereotypes,” and “We are the melting
pot.” Similarly, when students hoped to learn lessons by judging past societies, some sought
“Analogies between world history and U.S. history” and others posed “Useful lessons for
current lives.” Once I developed these specific subcategories, I coded the interview tran
scripts one more time and reorganized the coding categories into general ideas (Creswell,
2007). In this stage, I found that students constructed different reasons for why they needed
to learn given topics, and these reasons showed different patterns depending on the topic
and the values they assigned to it.
Across the patterns, I found that students frequently drew their prior conceptions from
national and religious contexts, such as their knowledge of U.S. history and Catholic rituals
and values from their current world, and they made use of such conceptions to connect or
disconnect world history knowledge and their sociocultural contexts. Thus, I added the
contrasting categories “Direct connections to sociocultural contexts” and “Otherizing based
on sociocultural contexts,” which became one of the main findings in this research. Lastly,
I gathered all examples from the interviews, which allowed me to finalize my findings by
comparing instances from different categories and contexts (Marshall & Rossman, 2011).
These patterns and examples are shown in Table 2.
Along with students’ responses, I also began the process of analysis by reading through the
entire body of observation data several times. With the observation data, my objective was to
contextualize students’ understandings—how each teacher approached each topic and in what
way their instruction connected to students’ understandings. Having discerned several distinct
approaches, I used organizational coding as an analytic strategy to locate and categorize
specific instances of the teachers’ efforts (Maxwell, 2012). I then created matrices to organize
multiple examples of a particular approach—for instance, connecting the past to the present,
Table 2. Coding categories and students’ reasons for learning world history topics.
Overarching themes in Perception of sociocultural Interview
Initial category Subcategory students’ reasons connections to topics set
To know my To know my ancestors Searching for our Connection A
origin To know my religious origins origins
To understand politics in the United
States
To understand ideology in the United
States
To not be self- To understand different lifestyles Understanding No Connection D
centered To understand different social differences
systems Countering our Connection E
To respect different people stereotypes
To reject stereotypes
To remember we are the melting pot
To learn To identify recurrences in the Learning historical Connection C
historical United States lessons in our world
lessons To learn lessons from the past
To judge moral To recognize similar patterns in Morally judging others No Connection B, F
issues different contexts
To pursue interest in good persons
and bad persons in history
Other To take a trip in the future Other practical N/A All
To have a conversation with friends purposes
To become smarter
To be a social studies teacher
countering stereotypes, and promoting reading like a historian. Finally, I identified how each
instructional approach was enacted in students’ interactions with the world history topics.
Limitations
As Barton and Avery (2016) have pointed out, in grasping students’ historical under
standing, it is necessary to conduct long-term studies of how students’ thinking changes
or develops based on various kinds of classroom instruction. In this study, however,
although data collection took an academic year, the purpose was not to track changes in
students’ thinking over time but to focus on how students differently interacted with
different content. In addition, I did not intervene in the instruction and only mention it
to contextualize the students’ ideas, and the students’ understanding is not explored in
relation to changes or progressions in the teachers’ instruction.
Researcher positionality
My scholarship is informed by my position as a Korean who received a degree from the
United States. The influence of U.S. politics on many countries, including South Korea, is
powerful, and U.S. citizens are likely to determine the policies that affect the rest of the
world. As one famous South Korean novelist put it in the title of their opinion article,
“While the U.S. Talks of War, South Korea Shudders” (Han, 2017). I believe this study
underscores the necessity for U.S. students to learn to use a variety of different frames so
their perspectives can be expanded to encompass not just a national but a global citizenry.
Given that people have different ways of viewing the world, students need to develop
dispositions to view the past from multiple perspectives and to see through others’ lenses
384 G. KIM
in order to take into account what others hold important. A world history curriculum that
helps students develop this level of complex, multiperspectival thinking has great potential.
This vision of world history education forms the background of the present research, which
aims to address the nature of students’ historical thinking at a critical early point. With these
complexities in mind—the values of learning world history and the concrete power of the
United States over the world—I have sought to foreground emic perspectives through
frequent and consistent use of quotations in the following sections (Marshall & Rossman,
2011).
Students’ understanding of world history topics

The findings of this study show that students had understandings of given world history
topics that closely aligned with teachers’ instructional strategies and that they assigned
meanings to given historical topics based on prior conceptions and perceived values from
their own sociocultural contexts. At times, they directly looked for meaning in specific
topics by connecting new knowledge to their own sociocultural contexts. In cases where
students could not find a direct connection, they focused on evaluating the justice or
injustice of historical events grounded in such values as democracy, human rights, and
nonviolence.
Direct connections to sociocultural contexts

Ancient Greece and Rome: Looking for imagined ancestors of the United States
In the first unit for sixth graders, Ancient Greece and Rome, Mr. Erickson focused primarily
on how Greece and Roman societies were similar to or different from present U.S. society.
In teaching about ancient Greece, he covered various political, religious, and cultural
aspects, and particularly taught how Athenian society was different from today’s society.
For ancient Rome, he followed a chronology that started with the beginning of Rome, but he
spent over a week teaching how Roman Catholicism was legalized under Constantine the
Great. An important activity in this unit was looking for similarities and differences among
ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the United States in terms of political, economic, and
societal structures; cultural traits; and achievements.
Despite the emphasis on both similarities and differences, however, students were more
inclined to consider similarities with the United States in their understanding of ancient
Greek and Roman society, and based on this understanding, they identified Athenians and
Romans as their political and cultural ancestors. Although Mr. Erickson emphasized
differences as well as similarities, for example, by pointing out that women could not
participate in politics in Athens, students focused primarily on commonalities and were
excited to think current society shared values with ancient Athens and Rome. Students
acknowledged differences, particularly that current democracy is more inclusive, but they
agreed that democracy in Athens was the root of the current U.S. democratic system.
Emphasizing that the “democracy [in ancient Athens] is a lot like our democracy today.
Just a few changes,” students searched for aspects in which ancient Athens was “like us” and
politically like the United States: “The direct democracy that Greece had is kind of why we
have democracy today and almost the same form” and “The direct democracy eventually
over thousands and hundreds of years turned into our government.” Students viewed
Athenian history not as foreign but as an early point on a trajectory leading to the United
States. One student, Harry, imagined a physical migration that created the modern political
system:
We’ve only been here for a few hundred years, and the people of ancient Greece are all the
people [who] migrated to the United States, and they brought their knowledge about democ
racy and made the United States for us. . . . A lot of things we are taught today are developed
from ancient Greece, like political systems and like the debating systems.
As the excerpt shows, Harry built a narrative that ancient Greeks had come to the United
States and taught democratic principles and created political systems similar to ancient
Athenian systems. By mixing what he knew of the migration history of the United States
and Athenian democracy, Harry fabricated a bridge over the large gap in time and location
between them.
Similarly, students thought the ancient Greeks and Romans directly transmitted scien
tific knowledge, sports, and arts to the present, as shown in these statements: “We have
gained especially from their developments and all the technologies” and “A lot of technol
ogies came from the ancient world.” Drawing an analogy between ancient and modern
athletic games, one student noted, “Rome had chariot races, and we do horseback races and
stuff.” When asked to explain this analogy, he responded, “We play sports, too, like they had
sports, and Roman civilizations are a society of chariot races, and we learned it, and so we
do, like, horseback races.” In their eagerness to establish a close line from Roman to modern
U.S. culture, students invented fantastical causalities that show that rather than try to
understand ancient civilizations in their own contexts, they co-opted them as elements in
their own national history.
Students frequently used first-person plural pronouns to talk about ancient Greece and
Rome. For instance, students referred to Athenian citizens and Roman people as part of
“our past” and considered ancient Greece and Rome important topics because they showed
“how we started” and “how our world started.” Their references show they searched for
personal connections with historical topics as a way of building political and sociocultural
identification (Barton & Levstik, 1998; Cornbleth, 2002; VanSledright & Brophy, 1992;
VanSledright, 1997, 2008). Their strong identification with ancient Athens and Rome can
be summed up in one student’s comment that they were the “building blocks for what we
have today.” Students seemed to extend their reason for studying national history to their
study of ancient Western civilizations—to “trace back to our origins.” To them, ancient
Athenians and Romans were their imagined ancestors, and they created truncated narra
tives of historical connections.
The French Revolution: Historical lessons for the United States

The French Revolution was an important unit in Mr. Erickson’s sixth-grade classes. Using
a combination of lectures, PowerPoint slides, and discussion, he covered the period from the
reign of Louis XIV to Napoleon’s fall. The content of his lessons included the process of political
change from monarchy to republic and the major institutions involved. In his lessons, he tried to
show multiple sides of individuals and events. For instance, he taught how Louis XVI struggled
to resolve France’s financial problems, what Robespierre tried to achieve, and both the despotic
and glorious aspects of Napoleon’s actions. After finishing the unit on the French Revolution,
Mr. Erickson spent a week reading and analyzing both the U.S. Declaration of Independence
386 G. KIM
and the French National Assembly’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. In this
case, he considered the basic philosophy of the Declaration of Independence as being relevant to
students’ own lives and sharing common points with the agenda of the French Revolution.
In the interviews, students usually pointed to the great value of the French Revolution
and its quest for freedom, equality, and the establishment of a republic. They frequently
brought up the spirit of the American Revolution at the same time, readily describing the
French and American Revolutions as being a “fight for equal-ness or freedom,” “a time of
hope for the people’s freedom,” and “the start of rights for citizens.” Students placed priority
on achievement of independence, freedom, and equality in the lessons and analogies they
drew from the French people’s struggles for a republican government. However, they went
beyond simple analogies and tried to identify historical lessons that American revolution
aries had learned from the French. All but one student reversed the actual chronology of the
two events to claim a causal relationship, declaring that the French Revolution provided
a blueprint for Americans. Comments such as the following were common: “I think the
French Revolution almost repeats itself in the American Revolution,” “The American
Revolution had some lessons and ideas from the French Revolution,” and “From the
French Revolution, we gained a pretty good idea of what the American Revolution should
be like.” Some students were highly specific in their incorrect explanations:
Bryan: I think it’s pretty interesting how both societies overcame those problems
and turned their societies around.
Morris: Yeah, kind of. If the French Revolution didn’t really go on, then we probably
wouldn’t be free, that much free, than we are right now. . . . I mean, like,
I would say that the French Revolution affects me in everyday life because if
Ben Franklin and John Hancock didn’t do the Declaration of Independence,
we would still have slavery. If the French Revolution didn’t happen, there is
a chance that we wouldn’t be free.
Bryan: We got a lot of government ways and rights from France. We adopted, not
adopted, but we got a lot of our rules and rights from France. We, the United
States, wouldn’t be a country without the French, and so France is a big part
of the United States government.
Sean: I think learning about the French Revolution is important because we got
a lot of our ideas and rights after they overthrew King Louis.
Based on an erroneous chronology, students gave the French Revolution credit not only for
inspiring the American Revolution but for other significant historical events, such as the
writing of the Declaration of Independence and the abolition of slavery.
This chronological confusion might have been partly due to the order in which the two
topics were covered in class. Mr. Erickson intentionally made time to analyze the two
documents as a bonus section in the French Revolution unit because both events, being the
most symbolic of civil revolutions, happened during the Enlightenment and shared similar
political philosophies. This timing might have confused students on the order of the two
revolutions. More importantly, their chronological confusion suggests the possible influ
ence of a linear narrative of progress. As many previous studies have pointed out,
U.S. students frequently think society has linearly progressed from the past to the present
(Barton & Levstik, 1998; Barton, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c; VanSledright, 2008; Wertsch &
O’Connor, 1994; Wineburg & Monte-Sano, 2008). In building a linear narrative, students
might have positioned the American Revolution as the culmination of historical progress
(Cornbleth, 2002). Because they likely already knew about the American Revolution and
perceived its greatness, they might have assumed the French Revolution was an inspiration
and object lesson, necessitating its being the predecessor and justifying its importance.
Although their confused chronology might have been corrected, their search for historical
lessons grounded in national contexts played a powerful role in their making sense of
particular topics. By making the American Revolution the beneficiary of the experiences of
the French, students implied that the U.S. government was a step beyond that of the French
and therefore superior.
The Histories of Islam: Countering negative stereotypes for the great melting pot
The history of Islam was one of the most important topics in Mr. Lewis’s seventh-grade
classes as his objective was to address misunderstandings of Islam as a violent religion.
Although he did not explicitly mention this purpose, he implicitly suggested it. He intro
duced the unit by discussing Islam’s five pillars, emphasized that almsgiving is mandatory
for Muslims, and discussed the concepts of greater Jihad and lesser Jihad, explaining that
the former was inner Jihad, or believers’ efforts to live in their Muslim faith, and the more
important value for Muslims. He seemed intent on challenging students’ stereotypes of
Islam and particularly focused on how several of Islam’s tenets were similar to those of
Christianity. At the same time, he taught about the complicated Arabian Peninsula political
situation in the seventh and eighth centuries, a violent period during which there were
many wars and divisions, including Hegira, the death of Ali, and the split of Islam into rival
branches.
For this unit, Mr. Lewis’s driving question was “Why did Islam spread so quickly?”
He required students to make historical arguments and write essays based on this
question, for which he provided a wide range of primary and secondary sources,
including material on military power within Islam, military maps showing large terri
tories under the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties, excerpts from the Quran stressing
gender and social equity, and tax alternatives to forcible religious conversion. These
materials not only documented how Islam became a world religion through military
power, but they also countered common stereotypes. The students intensively analyzed
the main points of the documents, who produced them, how they might be biased, and
the extent to which different documents corroborated each other.
During the interviews, which I conducted after students had finished their essays and
received Mr. Lewis’s feedback, students especially recounted the equal treatment of both
genders, provision of alternatives to forced conversion, and peaceful messages in the Quran,
with which they constructed the view that being a peaceful religion facilitated Islam’s rapid
spread over the world, more than military force. In addition, although students did not use
first-person pronouns in discussing the history of Islam, they still included Muslims in their
religious and national contexts, stating that Muslims believe in one god like Christians and that
they are also members of the American melting pot. Adhering to their perception that Islam
shares similar tenets with Christianity, some students tended to focus on how the religions
were similar rather than different. Martha and Jordan’s conversation typifies this pattern:
388 G. KIM
Interviewer: Do you think that it’s important to learn about Islam at school?
Martha: Yes, because it’s pretty similar, well, it’s kind of similar to Christianity,
all kinds of similar. They have one god, and we have one god. And most
of them are equal treatment to gender like us [sic]. And both are
peaceful.
Interviewer: Uh-huh.
Martha: It’s surprising they believe in Angel Gabriel. We believe in Gabriel.
Jordan: They believe in Gabriel, and Muhammad created pretty much their
religion with the help of Angel Gabriel, I am pretty sure. They celebrate
Ramadan, and we celebrate Christmas. Both are similar, kind of.
Although Martha and Jordan distinguished Christianity and Islam by using “we” for
Christianity and “they” for Islam, they focused on parallels between the two religions
such as having one god, the significance of Angel Gabriel, being “peaceful,” and the
promotion of gender equality “like us.” Seeking points of connection, students embraced
Islam and Muslims as part of the in-group.
In addition to religious contexts, students intentionally tried to counter negative stereo
types while confirming that the United States was a “great melting pot.” They took a liberal
stand against current conservative denunciations of Islam and constructed a narrative of
Islam as a peaceful religion. One student, John, imagined peaceful encounters between
Christians and Muslims in the past:
And equal treatment was the message from the Quran, and if you don’t, like, believe in Islam,
you just have to pay a small tax. . . . So it wasn’t like they’re trying to spread, but I mean,
according to the Quran, religion couldn’t be enforced. It’s why they couldn’t be like, “You’re
now Muslims!” because that wasn’t allowed. . . . In my head, if these people came and raided my
village, but they’re like, “We are Muslim, and we’re acting Muslim, but you could be okay with
that. If you’re Christians, you can keep doing that.” And I’d be like, “Deal!” Basically, they’re
pretty cool people after they raided my village.
This excerpt shows that John focused on positive aspects to imagine Islam as a nonviolent
religion, which served the purpose of repairing negative stereotypes as Islamophobia has
been on the rise in the United States. In his last comments, John imagined a peaceful first
encounter in which Muslims and Christians negotiated mutual religious tolerance, glossing
over the fact that the Muslims had just raided the Christians’ village. This selective focus
shut down other ideas relevant to physical conflict. The students tended to ignore the
variety of events marking the whole of Islamic history in favor of religious tolerance.
When selecting three images to explain Islam, all the students excluded the 9/11 attacks
on the World Trade Center, giving various reasons, most of which reinforced their
resistance to negative stereotypes of Muslims. While a few considered the event “too sad”
so they “don’t want to remember it,” others noted that Muslims would not “want to be
known for it.” Chloe spoke for the others when she argued that all Muslims should not be
blamed for the attacks:
It’s pretty much just saying that one of the people was in Islam, like it was a terrorist, but that
doesn’t necessarily mean that all Muslims are terrorists and so that wouldn’t really help you
explain the religion itself. It would just explain one person.
The other students showed a similar determination to resist stereotyping: “This stereotype
[that Muslims are terrorists] really started for Muslim people, I think when 9/11 happened.
People really thought . . . all Muslims are bad, but it’s not true” and “I think that a lot of
people think [all] Muslims might be . . . [in favor of] terrorists’ attacks, . . . but that is
incorrect, that is only a few people.” These comments in which students separated “all
Muslims” from the few who committed terrorist attacks reflect the teacher’s implied
admonition of prejudice and indirect assertion that there are many misunderstandings
about Islam in general.
In the same vein, when asked in the final round of interviews which unit was the most
important in their world history class, most students chose Islam because it aimed to foster
respect for various religions in U.S. society. Maggie’s response typified their reasoning:
I would say probably Islam honestly. Because the United States is a great melting pot, and there
are a lot of religions and cultures mixed in, so we are taught world history. . . . We don’t force
our religion or culture, because then you can respect other people more. If you walked out, if
you saw a bunch of people that pray five times a day, if you walked out and saw someone doing
that, you’re probably like, “What are they doing?” But since we know about it, we know about
what they’re doing, we don’t like to disturb them.
Among similar comments were the following: “If you know about their religion, you could
respect them,” “Learning about other religions would be a great way to be much more
accepting,” and “We see somebody believe in another religion, and we don’t make fun of
them, because it is the belief of another one.” As these excerpts suggest, students were
comfortable with the language and sentiment of respect for people’s differences as pre
scribed by the great melting pot metaphor.
Overall, the students’ ideas about specific world history topics reflected the teacher’s
implicit messages. Moreover, their perceptions of Islam reflected their expectation that in
their present day lives they would encounter different kinds of people, which is the formula
for a society that claims to have harmonious diversity. Guided by the goal of being tolerant
and accepting, however, their historical understanding was greatly oversimplified. Students
did not seriously consider the political or military aspects of Islam’s rapid expansion. They
often ignored actual events and gave no thought to Arabian political and economic
situations in the seventh century, although Mr. Lewis presented sources showing that
there were many violent wars and divisions after Muhammad converted to Islam. They
constructed a portrayal of Islam that mirrored their perception of their own society but
omitted most of the historical information.
Otherizing based on sociocultural contexts

Mesoamerican civilizations: Negative moral judgments
On the topics for which students could not find direct connections to their sociocultural
contexts, their understanding tilted toward negative judgment and perceptions of injustice.
When the students talked about Mesoamerican civilizations and the Mongolian Empire, they
focused on how these histories revealed moral messages. Mr. Erickson started the sixth-grade
390 G. KIM
unit on Mesoamerican civilizations by making KWL charts (Ogle, 1986) for students to grasp
the different lifestyles presented. Students began reading a simple text about Mesoamerican
lives and jotted down what they wanted to know about Mesoamerica. In the beginning,
students’ knowledge of the Mesoamerican world was mostly limited to European invasions,
but after reading, they expressed interest in Mesoamerican cultures, science, and daily lives.
After further reading in class about the politics, economics, and cultures of Mesoamerican
civilizations, students actively asked for more detailed information. They were sometimes
surprised to learn about advancements in science and technology but seemed even more
surprised at the extent to which the cultures and lifestyles of Mesoamerica differed from their
own. For instance, when maize gods were discussed, some students shouted, “Weird!”
During the interviews, students seemed to regard Mesoamerican civilizations as remote
from their own backgrounds, referring to the people as “not our ancestors” and “not really
related to us.” They did not seek cultural roots or beliefs parallel to their own but focused
superficially on brutal aspects as lessons in what not to do—for instance, saying they should
not “make the same mistakes, like human sacrifice.” Virtually all the students, including
those who identified as Latino/a, spoke disparagingly of Mesoamerican cultures and judged
them as morally inferior, citing murderous religious rituals and fatal sports events and
claiming the moral high ground for their own society. Students particularly focused on
practices of human sacrifice, elaborating them into scenes of widespread and perhaps
random carnage. Rather than attempt to understand the rationale for such customs in
their own context before making a judgment, students saw them as signifying the degrada
tion of these societies in comparison with their own. Their fixation on Mesoamerican
human sacrifice as viewed through the lens of Christianity is illustrated in the following
dialogue:
Interviewer: Why did you choose this image [of human sacrifice] to understand
Mesoamerican civilizations?
Joanne: Well, they did human sacrifice. I mean, they thought they’re doing
something to worship God, but I don’t understand that.
Fiona: Why didn’t they use a lamb or something?
Joanne: Maybe they didn’t know that.
Krystal: We have common sense, and we don’t like killing people.
Fiona: It’s nicer to pray and go to church than kill people.
Joanne: Maybe just like a shrine and something.
Fiona: They could’ve sacrificed sheep and stuff. They didn’t really think Jesus
was a savior.
As the excerpt above shows, students attributed human sacrifice to ignorance of truths they
themselves possessed about prayer, shrines, and the suitability of lambs for slaughter. Such
items as prayer, shrines, and lambs reflected the students’ Christian customs as they judged
Mesoamerican customs based on values from their own religious contexts, which indicated
the use of familiar customs as an anchoring point and a failure to consider religious
perspectives judged as alien and incompatible with their own, summed up in Krystal’s
comment, “We have common sense.”
Students’ perspectives toward Mesoamerican ball games, in which losers were sacrificed,
were highly similar, as the following dialogue shows:
Interviewer: Why did you choose the ball game to explain Mesoamerican
civilization?
Scott: Mesoamerican people had a lot of different sports, and if whatever
team lost, they got stabbed and killed to death.
Interviewer: Oh, why do you think that they had those customs?
David: It’s sportsmanship. Now, you don’t kill people if they lose.
Scott: They didn’t have sportsmanship.
Ronald: Most of us believe in God and commandments that you shall not kill, so.
Scott: I play sports, and we’ve lost many, many times. But you don’t kill
people if they lose. Like David said, it’s sportsmanship.
Again, students evoked their own social norms and ascribed the killing of losers to a lack of
Christian sensibility and sportsmanship. Their judgments were decisive: “This is wrong,”
“They were like un-smarter,” and “They were not Christians.” As these excerpts suggest,
students focused exclusively on critical judgments grounded in the superiority of their own
ethical values. Their judgments of what is just or unjust was anchored in their own values
from the current world, and students could not go beyond such moral frames. Also, having
relegated Mesoamericans, with what students saw as their peculiar cultures and depraved
customs, to a remote category, they found no reason to seek to understand them.
The Mongolian Empire: Negative moral judgments

A similar pattern was repeated in the seventh-grade students’ understanding of the
Mongolian Empire. For this class, Mr. Lewis provided a guiding question, “Were the
Mongols barbaric or civilized?” and multiple sources with which students were to construct
historical arguments. The aim was to approach history analytically and make historical
arguments supported by primary and secondary sources. The teacher provided documents
showing different aspects of Mongolian society without taking a side himself so students
would focus on analyzing sources and building robust arguments. The materials included
sources such as maps of territory expansions and documents showing war tactics, family
structures, religious tolerance, and scenes of the capital city.
Despite the balance among sources describing multiple aspects of the empire, many
students again demonstrated fascination with aspects they found horrific and often enthu
siastically disparaged the Mongols for brutal tactics:
Dakota: They were barbaric. . . . they slaughtered people who were innocent. They
were brutal to them and then they slaughtered everybody for no reason,
even the dogs and babies. What were they doing? What did they ever do?
I am really passionate about some things. The dogs, the babies, little kids,
and probably most women, and even men, too, didn’t do anything to them.
They were just like, “We are the Mongols. We are amazing and powerful.”
Yeah, they were really barbaric.
392 G. KIM
Sarah: They were really barbaric because they slaughtered whole towns for no
reason, and that was really wrong, and they pretty much killed anybody
that wouldn’t be useful to them. That wasn’t okay. . . . I remember reading
this. One of their leaders enjoyed watching enemies, like, crying and dying.
I think that was really, really wrong. That was really messed up.
Dakota: Messed up and inhumane.
As the excerpt shows, students were strongly affected by practices they found barbaric.
A few students thought the Mongols were civilized because their battle tactics were inter
esting and well organized, but most fixated on how they killed innocent people and captives
to gain territory. This pattern was similar to students’ understanding of Mesoamerican
civilizations: They made a judgment of a past society that was anchored in current values,
such as being humane or not, and did not make an effort to contextualize differences.
This strong levying of judgment without other considerations was partly due to students’
interpretation of Mr. Lewis’s central question, “Were Mongols barbaric or civilized?” His
purpose was for students to consider both possibilities as they consulted sources to
construct their historical arguments. However, students were strongly affected by practices
they found barbaric. Although it was not the teacher’s intention, the structure of his guiding
question might have encouraged students to take a dualistic rather than a more nuanced
view. As students immediately became judgmental without seeking further understanding,
it was evident they had already regarded the Mongols as remote from their own political and
sociocultural backgrounds. Indeed, no student used metaphors of inclusiveness to indicate
any sense of affiliation with the Mongolian Empire.
Rationally understanding differences

There was at least one instance of a middle ground, when the students dealt with the topic of
Ancient Egypt, which was the first unit in Mr. Lewis’s seventh-grade classrooms. For this
topic, the guiding question was “What role did the Nile River have in developing Ancient
Egypt?” To construct historical arguments in response to this question, students were
provided with a variety of primary and secondary sources, including Herodotus' records
about Egypt and maps of ancient Egypt. Students showed authentic curiosity about the
ancient Egyptians’ distinct lifestyles and rationally embraced those differences as difference
itself. Perhaps because of the appeal of pyramids and mummies in popular literature and
movies, most students were highly interested in learning about ancient Egypt.
While learning about ancient Egypt, students usually looked for differences rather than
similarities with their own contexts. For instance, one student noted, “They [Egyptians]
believed their physical bodies and their objects went to the afterlife, but we just believe our
souls go to heaven. It’s not like our physical objects,” and another agreed, “The afterlife was
a big part of ancient Egyptians’ lives, and they prepared for the afterlife.” This conversation
suggests that students recognized that the Egyptians’ worldviews were different from their
own. This pattern of recognition differed when their national background made them feel
connected with topics, as with ancient Greece and Rome, the French Revolution, and Islam.
With these topics, students looked for political, sociocultural, or religious connections or
analogies to their own society or ways to counter negative stereotypes. This analysis of
ancient Egypt also differed from their approach to Mesoamerican civilizations and the
Mongolian Empire in which students focused on practices they could judge rather than
rationally acknowledging various lifestyles in different times and locations. For ancient
Egypt, students looked for ways Egyptians were dissimilar and tried to understand why their
lives were different, which might paradoxically reflect their familiarity with ancient Egypt in
popular media.
Interestingly, some students even tried to view their own society through the eyes of the
ancient Egyptians. Shifting their perspective in this manner led them to critique present-day
issues of equality and fairness, an outcome not evident in their responses to the other
cultures. The students evaluated the social hierarchy in ancient Egyptian society as being on
par with problems in contemporary society, which was the standard by which the students
judged the other civilizations and events. Two boys discussed this topic at length and
concluded that money was important in deciding social status in present society, which
they determined was a matter of concern.
Interviewer: Why did you choose this image, the hierarchical system of Egypt?
Joe: Because it’s kind of interesting, because scribes are above merchants,
which I would think they should be switched, because merchants
would make more money than others, and usually people who had
a lot of money are at the top. I don’t know why, but it’s very interesting
to me.
Mason: But they’re, like, they’ll think our society is interesting.
Joe: And strange.
Mason: Maybe.
Interviewer: Oh, why? Why it could [sic] be strange?
Joe: I was saying because our world, especially in U.S. society, a lot of
people are saying that the rich are getting richer and richer, and the
poor are getting poorer.
Mason: I agree. More, and some rich people are, I’ll just say, taking more
money. I heard this and found it in newspapers and stuff.
Joe: For Egypt, scribes were above merchants, which is surprising to me.
I can’t entirely understand that, and now we think it is kind of
interesting. But I thought our society is kind of interesting too.
Dylan: Yeah, I really like what Joe says, and maybe they’re saying like, “Well,
the rich are getting richer in America. It’s interesting.”
In this example, students turned the lens around to view their own society from the
outside, a response that happened only in relation to ancient Egypt. Although the
students did not exactly contextualize ancient Egyptian society and its social structures,
it is important that they recognized that different societies have different customs and
cultures and that their own ways are not always best. By starting with analytical
understanding rather than judgment of others, the students also ended up trying to
understand their own world.
394 G. KIM
Discussion
When students encounter new knowledge, they connect it to prior conceptions and
organize it into meaningful structures, which Piaget (1950/1954) referred to as assimilation.
In more recent years, this process has been considered in wider terms of sociocultural
context—not as an individual cognitive process (Cole, 1996). When students encounter
historical topics, they use reasoning to digest and assimilate them into both broad and
specific sociocultural contexts (Wertsch, 1998). In this sense, historical understanding is not
simply acquiring knowledge but, rather, an action in which students engage in interpreting
historical topics within their own sociocultural contexts (Wertsch, 1998). From a use-of-
history perspective, it can be said that in their discussion of historical topics, the students
were not solely recalling historical knowledge but “communicating what is already articu
lated” in accordance with their present social needs (Nordgren, 2016, p. 484).
The findings of this study show that students do not merely absorb historical knowledge,
but they interact with historical content and assign specific meanings to each topic. In order
to understand new knowledge in world history, students actively used prior conceptions,
including specific content from U.S. history and society, which served as a resource for their
constructing of world history narratives, as in the cases of ancient Greece and Rome, the
French Revolution, and the histories of Islam. However, the students’ prior conceptions
were not restricted to content knowledge; their moral frames of justice, stemming from
national and religious contexts, also shaped how they interacted with world history topics
(Barton, 2005; G. Kim, 2018; Levstik, 2001). Although these moral frames could be
discussed separately according to context, for the students in this study (except for a few
who participated in the interviews on ancient Egypt), the values they held from both their
U.S. and Christian contexts were alike in many ways and compatible. As Christians, the
students believed themselves to be oriented toward such values as peace, equality, and love,
and they were expected to share their privilege with others. These values were not contra
dictory to the national values that students held, as the United States is oriented toward
democratic values, including inclusiveness and tolerance. Ultimately, overarching values,
such as democracy, human rights, and nonviolence, derived from their current world,
provided the students with a lens to make judgments of historical events, especially those
they thought were remote from themselves.
More importantly, this study suggests that prior conceptions and classroom instruction
together have a complicated influence on students’ connections to and interactions with
historical topics (Piaget, 1950/1954). Depending on instructional strategies, students inter
acted with prior conceptions along different patterns; sometimes classroom instruction
accommodated students’ prior conceptions, but other times, classroom instruction sup
ported the students in actively changing prior conceptions and establishing new knowledge
(Bransford et al., 2000). Specifically, in the ancient Greece and Rome and French Revolution
units, the teacher’s instruction unintentionally coincided with the students’ (mis)concep
tions of U.S. history and eventually contributed to their misunderstanding of those topics.
For instance, in an attempt to bring history to life, students were asked to find similarities
and differences between ancient Greek and Roman societies and current U.S. society. In the
French Revolution unit, students compared the Declaration of Independence and the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which might have prompted them to
unconsciously connect world history topics and the United States. Although the prior
conceptions themselves were not the focus of this study’s investigation, many previous
studies have shown that U.S. students construct national narratives by internalizing specific
historical narratives and use national history to construct meanings relevant to national
pride and to position the United States at the peak of progress (Barton & Levstik, 1998;
Cornbleth, 2002; VanSledright, 2008). By incorporating new information about ancient
Greece and Rome and the French Revolution into national narratives, the students in this
study constructed plausible, but wholly fictional, narratives. Believing that society has
progressed linearly, combined with their knowledge of the immigration history of the
United States, students undoubtedly connected Athenian democracy and U.S. democracy.
Also, believing the American Revolution was greater, students confused the chronology of
the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Though the teacher did not provide
wrong information, his instructional strategies might have effectively stimulated, rather
than rebutted, the assimilation of new information into national narratives.
In the case of the Mesoamerican civilizations and the Mongolian Empire units, however,
the teachers’ instruction, while not directly based on moral responses, triggered students to
make judgments about the justice or injustice of historical acts based on prior conceptions,
which reflected values from their own contexts (Barton, 2005; G. Kim, 2018; Levstik, 2001).
In class, moreover, political and sociocultural Mesoamerican customs were compared to
those in current society, but students did not have the opportunity to fully reason why such
differences occurred. They simply felt those civilizations were exotic, and they explained
away the exoticness as moral inferiority. On the other hand, students were guided to
evaluate Mongolian civilizations with a wide range of sources; however, they were guided
by a yes or no question rather than more complex questions. Therefore, despite the different
sources that were examined, the guiding question might have pushed students to focus
primarily on more stimulating aspects, such as the brutality of Mongolian war tactics, that
appeared remote from the values they strongly associated with their Christian beliefs, such
as peace and love, and values they associated with the nation, such as democracy. To these
students, understanding a past far removed from their own context may have been an
unnatural act (Wineburg, 2001), and thus, it could have been easier for students to criticize
others’ customs than to contextualize them.
Meanwhile, in the unit on the histories of Islam, the teacher’s instruction might have
circumvented students’ prior conceptions. Strongly influenced by the teacher’s implicit
messages about Islam, the students included Muslims as members of the great melting pot,
contrasting prevailing discourses toward Islam in U.S. society. As many studies have
suggested, since 9/11, Muslims have been commonly perceived as terrorists who commit
violent acts (Abu El-Haj, 2010; Abu El-Haj et al., 2017; Ghaffar-Kucher, 2015; Gholami,
2021; Jones, 2017; Lévesque, 2003; Welply, 2018). However, in this study, the students were
consciously instructed that violence and terror were far from the fundamental spirit of
Islam, and they read primary sources showing original tenets such as social equity, almsgiv
ing, and pure Muslim faith. The teacher particularly stressed that Muslims also believed in
one god like Christians and that students might find more similarity than foreignness
between their respective cultures. Contrary to the units on ancient Greece and Rome and
the French Revolution, in which the teacher’s instructional strategy unintentionally inte
grated with students’ prior conceptions, the teacher’s instruction on the histories of Islam
might have overshadowed common national narratives toward Islam and Muslims and thus
encouraged students to critically examine these perspectives. In addition to being presented
396 G. KIM
in a positive light by the teacher, the students, who all identified as Christians, perhaps also
felt connected to Islam because it is another Abrahamic religion.
In contrast, the students’ approach to ancient Egypt showed quite a different pattern of
understanding, which could also be explained in relation to the teacher’s instructional
strategies. On a basic level, the students did not encounter practices such as cruel warfare
tactics and human sacrifice that evoked moral responses or their tendency to judge other
societies, so they were able to view Egyptian society through an unobstructed analytical lens.
More importantly, however, the teacher’s instructional strategies focused on teaching about
the different lifestyles of ancient Egyptians with the relatively open question “What role did
the Nile River have in developing Ancient Egypt?” Indeed, this question would have motivated
students to approach ancient Egypt by making connections between environmental and
structural phenomena and the Egyptians’ mind-sets. Furthermore, similar to the teachers in
previous studies on historical empathy (Brooks, 2008, 2011; Endacott, 2010, 2014; Endacott &
Brooks, 2018; Kohlmeier, 2006), Mr. Lewis spent a majority of the unit analyzing drawings
from tombs and reading primary and secondary sources. Thus, students spent much time
inferring about the Egyptians’ daily lives and their mentalities from documents and illustra
tions of architecture and relics. Although Mr. Lewis touched on structural factors in every
unit, he primarily focused on environmental and societal structures in the unit on ancient
Egypt in order to stress the importance of the Nile River to the Egyptians. Ultimately, in
learning about ancient Egypt, students accepted that there could be different lifestyles
depending on different situations, and they were able to regard these differences as interesting
rather than bizarre and reprehensible. Though the students still did not show in-depth
understandings of ancient Egypt, it is fair to point out that by learning how the Egyptians’
lives were influenced by their natural environment, they began to draw a bigger picture to
explain the different lifestyles of the Egyptians rather than morally judging them, and they
even started reflecting more objectively on their own society.
Overall, influenced by sociocultural as well as instructional contexts, students’ under
standings of world history topics were related to the extent to which they perceived
connections to their own lives. Specifically, students found direct and indirect connections
to a few topics, such as ancient Athenian politics, the French Revolution, and the histories of
Islam, but for such topics as Mesoamerican civilizations and the Mongolian Empire,
students found the civilizations different from themselves and explained those differences
as moral inferiority. As for ancient Egypt, however, any tendency toward judgment was
withheld, and students tried to contextualize differences and rationally understand them. In
general, the closer the perceived connections to their own backgrounds, the greater their
emotional attachment and rational understanding, and vice versa.
Their understandings reveal a significant irony: Although the students were expected to
expand their perspectives by engaging in world history (Gaudelli, 2003; Girard & Harris,
2013; Harris & Bain, 2010; Marino, 2010; Myers, 2006), their reasoning about world history
did not go beyond national context. It is assumed that world history does not directly
espouse national values as U.S. history does (Bender, 2006; Bentley, 2007). However, this
study shows that students respond to world history topics within their own frameworks,
and thus, their patterns of understanding are highly similar to their approaches to national
histories. Across multiple world history topics, students’ perspectives converged on their
current values instead of expanding to new horizons. Most often, their interactions with
world history content reflected perceptions of virtue from their own national context, which
seemed to determine the degree to which they felt close to or remote from particular groups
in history. Students’ understanding of world history was ultimately a product of their own
sociocultural setting, as their awareness of accepted values wielded indomitable power over
how they viewed others and responded to others’ historical events.
Implications and conclusion

As the teacher’s instruction plays a key role in the operation of students’ prior conceptions
and their interactions with world history, the findings of this study provide important
implications for teaching. Above all, when teachers instruct world history classes, they need
to be aware that students’ prior conceptions have already been constructed around their
national history. In terms of curriculum organization, students are usually exposed to
national narratives before they encounter world history, and even out of school, it is likely
that students will frequently come into contact with national narratives (Bain & Shreiner,
2005; Martin et al., 2011). Therefore, teachers should encourage students to reconsider their
own prior conceptions based on U.S. history.
Therefore, it is important to raise students’ critical awareness of their own thinking
processes (i.e., their metacognition; Pintrich, 2002; Tanner, 2012). For productive learning
of world history, students need to know how they process, as well as practice, knowledge so
they can actively monitor their thinking and learning strategies (Bransford et al., 2000;
Pintrich, 2002; Tanner, 2012). By detecting the role of narrators and narratives within
specific sociocultural contexts—in other words, by raising metacognition surrounding
particular historical understandings—students can be “aware of the frameworks they
bring to their historical interpretations” (Wills, 2011, p. 141). This awareness enables
students to understand and reflect on how they have reached particular conclusions and
evaluate that process (Bransford et al., 2000). To tackle how students process historical
knowledge, teachers could ask thought-provoking questions that do not align with students’
prior conceptions. For instance, questions asking about the historical aspect of values, such
as peace, and their different applications would help students reconsider how they think and
what they think (Barton & Levstik, 2004). As students consider how the meaning of peace
has changed in different time periods and places, they may be able to gain fresh perspectives
on the concept of peace, which they have already engaged in their learning of history.
Moreover, contextualization is always important for teaching history, particularly world
history. By its nature, the discipline of history guides students in tracing the origins and
development of current situations, thus providing the opportunity to historically contex
tualize differences among a broad spectrum of cultures (Bentley, 2007). Given that people
have different ways of viewing the world, studying broader historical contexts would help
students develop dispositions that facilitate viewing the past from multiple perspectives to
take into account what others hold important. Thus, world history curricula can encourage
students to avoid superficial understandings and engage in the myriad political, economic,
and social affairs that reflect different worldviews by understanding their historical roots
(Stearns, 2006). In this study, however, when students considered differences from context
to context, they did not have the opportunity to deeply engage in contextualizing the
differences. For instance, when students approached Mesoamerican civilizations, they
grasped that those societies were operating with different sociocultural mechanisms, but
they did not go further in reasoning how those differences originated. Because
398 G. KIM
contextualization is not easy, students likely chose more convenient ways to understand
historical events—simply judging them as morally or logically inferior (Barton & Levstik,
2004). Thus, merely knowing about differences is not enough for students to profoundly
understand such differences; they must deeply engage with knowledge and deliberate why
such differences exist.
In world history classes, attention must be paid to the ultimate purpose of world history,
which is to go beyond one’s own frames to see the world, to expand one’s horizons, and to
be tolerant of others’ values (Bentley, 2005, 2007; Gaudelli, 2003; Harris & Bain, 2010;
Manning, 2003; Marino, 2010; Myers, 2006). In a globalized context full of differences,
misunderstandings, and conflicts, teaching students to understand others may be the
school’s most important mission. Learning world history could be an initial step to under
standing others who have different cultures, customs, and mentalities, as students engage in
historically contextualizing such differences and discover the multiple ways of societies
throughout human history and how they affected each other. To promote deeper under
standing of others, world history curriculum needs to challenge students to construct
persuasive discourses that recognize multiple identities, including those that transcend
national pride, and encompass a perspective that is inclusive and flexible. To progress
beyond romanticization of the past, schools should offer multiple history courses structured
around different units of analysis, such as nation, region, and globe, so that students can
learn to compare alternative interpretations of historical events, including those of their
own country. Such a comprehensive understanding would help prepare U.S. students to live
among diverse cultures, both nationally and globally, in the world of their future.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank professor Keith C. Barton for his special patience with reading this manuscript
multiple times and providing productive feedback on drafts. I also want to express my gratitude to all
the teachers who helped me recruit participants and to the students for sharing their ideas about
historical topics.
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Appendix A: Participants’ demographics

Sixth graders (Teacher: Mr. Erickson)
Name Gender Ethnic origin Religion Citizenship Interview set

Mary F European Protestant USA A, B
Krystal F European Catholic USA A, B
Patricia F European Catholic USA A, C
Jennifer F European Protestant USA A, C
Susan F European Protestant USA A, C
Jessica F European Catholic USA A, C
Karen F European Catholic USA A, C
Nancy F European Catholic USA B, C
Betty F Non-identifiable Protestant USA B, C
Ashley F Non-identifiable Protestant USA B, C
Morris F European Protestant USA B, C
Emily F European Catholic USA B, C
Joanne F European Catholic USA B, C
Donna F European Catholic USA B, C
Amy F Non-identifiable Catholic USA A
Anna F Non-identifiable Catholic USA A
Brenda F Latina Protestant USA B
Sharon F Latina Catholic USA B
Fiona F European Catholic USA B
Rachel F European Protestant USA C
Debra F European Catholic USA C
Helen F European Catholic USA C
Harry M European Protestant USA A, B
Larry M European Catholic USA A, B
Scott M Non-identifiable Protestant USA A, B
Gregory M Asian Protestant USA A, C
Jacob M Non-identifiable Catholic USA A, C
Bryan M European Catholic USA A, C
Ryan M European Catholic USA A, C
Sean M European Catholic USA A, C
Eric M European Catholic USA A, C
Gary M European Catholic USA A, C
Dongjoo M Asian Protestant Korea A, C
Fran M European Protestant USA B, C
Ronald M Non-identifiable Protestant USA B, C
Alex M Non-identifiable Protestant USA B, C
Mark M Non-identifiable Protestant USA B, C
David M European Catholic USA B, C
Joshua M European Catholic USA A
Paul M European Catholic USA B
Seventh graders (Teacher: Mr. Lewis)
Name Gender Ethnic origin Religion Citizenship Interview set

Joan F Mixed Catholic USA D, E
Gloria F Non-identifiable Catholic USA D, E
Teresa F European Catholic USA D, F
Dakota F European Protestant USA D, F
Maggie F European Protestant USA E, F
Chloe F European Catholic USA E, F
Sarah F European Catholic USA E, F
Martha F European Catholic USA E, F
Janice F European Catholic USA D
Alice F Non-identifiable Catholic USA D
Julia F Mixed Catholic USA E
Jean F European Catholic USA E
Jordan M European Catholic USA D, E
Joe M Non-identifiable Protestant USA D, E
Mason M European Catholic USA D
Louis M European Protestant USA D
Bobby M European Catholic USA D
Dylan M European Protestant USA D
Rohan M European Catholic USA E
John M European Protestant USA E
Billy M European Catholic USA F
Bruce M European Protestant USA F
Albert M European Protestant USA F
Gabriel M European Catholic USA F
Alan M Asian Catholic USA F
James M Latino Catholic USA F
Note: Interview set A: Ancient Greece and Rome; Interview set B: Mesoamerican Civilizations; Interview set C: French
Revolution; Interview set D: Ancient Egypt; Interview set E: The Origin and Development of Islam; Interview set F:
Mongolian Empire
Appendix B: Lists of captioned images

Set A. Ancient Greece and Rome
● People fishing near the Mediterranean

● Athenian women pounding grain at home
● Athletes in ancient Olympic Games
● A woman athlete from Sparta
● Vestal virgins protecting the sacred fire of Vesta (the goddess of the hearth)
● Adult men in Athens voting and creating the city’s laws
● People enjoying such Greek foods as olive oil and local vegetables
● Alexander the Great trying to live by the theme, “Might Tempered by Mercy”
● Roman senators stabbing Julius Caesar
● Hannibal and his soldiers crossing the Alps into Rome
● Constantine the Great converting from polytheism to Christianity
● Many tourists visiting the Colosseum in Rome, Italy
● Roman aqueducts
406 G. KIM
Set B. Mesoamerican civilizations
● Human sacrifice in Mesoamerican culture

● Machu Picchu, a beautiful tour site, in the Andes Mountains
● Mayan hieroglyphs
● The storming of the Teocalli by Cortez and his troops
● Mayan number systems and mathematics
● Tenochtitlan, the capital city and religious center of Aztec civilization
● Various gods in Mesoamerican civilization, such as the god of sun and the maize god
● Mesoamerican ball game
● Skillful women who are weaving textiles in Inca civilization
● Popular Mesoamerican cuisines in current society
Set C. The French Revolution
● A crowd of armed women marching to Versailles

● Posters announcing that the third estate breaks from oppression
● King Louis XIV and the Palace of Versailles—Symbols of absolute monarchy
● Napoleon Bonaparte, who led the Glory of France or despotism?
● The invention of guillotine for non-painful and impartial death
● A caricature of the third estate carrying the clergy and the nobility
● Statue of Liberty granted by France—an icon of freedom in the United States
● The proclamation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen
Set D. Ancient Egypt
● Egyptian people playing music and dancing

● Many Egyptian gods
● Demonstration of scientific skills for making mummies and building pyramids
● The Book of the Dead
● The Female Pharaoh, Hatshepsut
● Egyptian women brewing beer
● The peace treaty between Egyptian and Hittites (the Treaty of Kadash)
● Egyptian calendars
● Historians deciphering hieroglyphics
● Egyptian social pyramids
Set E. The origin and development of Islam
● The development of mathematics, science, and technology in Islamic society

● Pilgrimages to Mecca
● Continuous conflicts between Western countries and Al-Qaeda illustrated by the 9/11
terror attack, the Paris attack, or London metro bombing
● Almsgiving—the financial obligation that God has placed on all Muslims who have been
blessed with material wealth to give to those in need
● Muslims participating in ritual fasting during the month of Ramadan

● Non-Muslims who worship their own religion by paying a tax (Jizyah)
● Muslims pray five times a day
● Muhammad, the Prophet of Allah, who received revelations from the angel Gabriel
● Lesser Jihad (the religious duty of Muslims to spread Islam) and Early Muslim
Conquest
● Greater Jihad—internal struggle to follow the Five Pillars of Islam
● Great trade routes and commercial activities
● Messages from Quran, “The believers who do good works, both men and women, shall
enter Paradise,” and equal treatment regardless of gender
Set F. The Mongolian Empire
● The Great Wall of China

● Expansion of Mongolian Empire to Europe
● John of Plano Carpini carrying on accounts about Mongol Empire
● Religious tolerance in Mongol Empire
● The great Winter Hunt—civilian activities mirroring military training
● Mongol battle tactics
● Elite cavalry forces of the Mongols wearing silk shirts beneath armor systems
● A variety of weapons including daggers, composite bows, and three-quivered
arrows
Appendix C: Interview protocols

Ask students if they would like to participate in the interview. If they agree, explain the first part
of the task: “I have a set of images about a world history topic: [the given interview topic]. What
I would like for you to do is work with your partner to select three images that you would use for
this display board, if you giving a presentation on the topic.” Show the example display board.
“Which three images will you choose to illustrate the topic [the given interview topic] for the
display board? Actually, all of these images could be useful, so there is no correct or incorrect
answer, and keep in mind that this task is not like a test. As you’re working on it, please talk to
your partner about what you’re thinking and why you think certain images should be selected.
After you’re finished, I’ll ask why you chose those images.” Then, give students time to choose
three images. After they are finished, ask:
(1) [Point out one image.] Why did you choose this image?
(2) If you are going to put all three together with one caption, what would the caption be?
(3) Do you think that different people have different ideas about world history, and why?
(4) [Point out one image.] Why did they have this culture/custom/lifestyle?
(5) Why do you think world history is a subject taught in school?
(6) Do you like to study [given interview topic]?
(7) Why is important to learn [given interview topic]?
(8) If you had a choice, would you study world history or U.S. history, and why?
(9) Do you think that the purpose for learning world history is different from U.S. history,
and why?
(10) Where have you learned about world history outside of school?
(11) Do you have any other questions for me?

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“Because the United States is a great melting pot”: How

CONTACT Geena Kim [email protected]; [email protected] Korea Institute of Curriculum and

Students’ interactions with history

Building a sense of group identity

Forming a moral response

Drawing historical lessons

Instrument and procedures

Table 1. Interview topics and participants.

Students’ understanding of world history topics

Direct connections to sociocultural contexts

The French Revolution: Historical lessons for the United States

Otherizing based on sociocultural contexts

The Mongolian Empire: Negative moral judgments

Rationally understanding differences

Implications and conclusion

Appendix A: Participants’ demographics

Name Gender Ethnic origin Religion Citizenship Interview set

Seventh graders (Teacher: Mr. Lewis)

Name Gender Ethnic origin Religion Citizenship Interview set

Appendix B: Lists of captioned images

● People fishing near the Mediterranean

Set B. Mesoamerican civilizations

● Human sacrifice in Mesoamerican culture

Set C. The French Revolution

● A crowd of armed women marching to Versailles

Set D. Ancient Egypt

● Egyptian people playing music and dancing

Set E. The origin and development of Islam

● The development of mathematics, science, and technology in Islamic society

● Muslims participating in ritual fasting during the month of Ramadan

Set F. The Mongolian Empire

● The Great Wall of China

Appendix C: Interview protocols

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