2025 Theses Doctoral

Teaching and Learning Racial Capitalism: Integrating Racial Capitalism into Social Justice Educators’ Teaching of the Reconstruction Era

Herold, Eve

Social justice-oriented teachers are crucial to challenging harmful master narratives in U.S. social studies education. Master narratives obscure the history and mechanisms of racial capitalism, which functions through racialized fracturing of human relations for capital accumulation, domination, and exploitation. There is limited research that focuses on how and if social studies educators engage with racial capitalism in their teaching and learning. This study uses interviews and two researcher-designed workshops to explore how secondary social studies teachers make sense of (1) teaching the Reconstruction Era through engaging with racial injustice and challenging existing dominant narratives, and (2) teaching and learning racial capitalism.

Findings from this study suggest that social justice educators who take up difficult histories of Reconstruction- those that challenge existing dominant narratives and engage with racial injustice- conceptualize that undertaking in complex and nuanced ways. Their understanding and framework for teaching historical injustice in the Reconstruction period are mediated by their own pedagogical content knowledge, ideological orientation towards their role as an educator, and emotional reactions to perceptions of student learning.

Introducing teachers to racial capitalism accentuates these affective, epistemological, and pedagogical elements not only because it is new knowledge, but also because of the ways in which a framework of racial capitalism potentially disrupts their existing epistemic orientation towards racial injustice. Such findings emphasize the need for future research that explores the significance and implications of teaching and learning racial capitalism.