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How Students Navigate the Construction of Heritage Narratives
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How Students Navigate the Construction of

Heritage Narratives
Sara A. Levy
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Theory & Research in Social Education, 45: 157–188, 2017
Copyright © College and University Faculty Assembly of
National Council for the Social Studies
ISSN 0093-3104 print / 2163-1654 online
DOI: 10.1080/00933104.2016.1240636
How Students Navigate the Construction of Heritage

Narratives
Sara A. Levy
Wells College
Abstract: Using a multiple case study design, I examine how public high school students
(n = 17) make sense of narratives about defining events with which they have specific
heritage connections. Focusing on 3 groups of students (Hmong, Chinese, and Jewish)
studying 3 heritage events (respectively, the Vietnam War, Modern China, and the
Holocaust), this article addresses the following research question: How do students in
public schools construct narratives of those events with which they have a heritage
connection? Findings indicate that students appreciate, benefit, and learn from the inclusion
of heritage histories in their high school classrooms; they can engage in complex historical
thinking about subjects that may hold heavy emotional weight; and emotion can facilitate
student engagement with heritage histories. Importantly, including these histories in the
official knowledge of the classroom legitimated the stories and demonstrated to the
students that their own and their families’ pasts are an important part of history.
Keywords: emotion, heritage, history education, identity, secondary education,

social studies education
This article discusses findings responding to the research question: How do

students in public schools construct narratives of those events with which they
have a heritage connection? In other words, heritage events are events that
students are too young to have been involved in but that their family members or
other members of an affinity group (racial, ethnic, national, religious) to which
they belong were involved. In this way, the students’ heritage connections stem
from their shared identity as members of the affinity groups. Prior research (e.g.,
An, 2009; Epstein, 1998, 2000, 2009; Peck, 2010; Wills, 1996) has demon-
strated that students’ racial, religious, ethnic, national, and socioeconomic class
backgrounds impact and influence students’ historical thinking. Barton (2008)
Correspondence should be sent to Sara A. Levy, Education Program, Wells College,

112 Macmillan Hall, 170 Main Street, Aurora, NY 13026. Email: slevy@wells.edu
158 Levy
astutely noted, however, that “much more research is needed to illustrate the
specific ways in which students of given backgrounds learn history both in and
out of school” (p. 250). History classrooms are sites of national narrative
construction and disbursement (VanSledright, 2008), which make them appro-
priate sites of inquiry as part of an effort to understand how—or if—a diverse
and multicultural society values and affirms the lives and stories of all members.
Therefore, this article examines the intersection of histories learned at home and
histories learned at school for three heritage groups: Hmong students in St. Paul,
Minnesota, studying the Vietnam War; Chinese students in Los Angeles,
California, studying Modern China; and Jewish students in Chicago, Illinois,
studying the Holocaust.
Wertsch’s (1998) conception of sociocultural analysis grounds this study:
“[T]he task of a sociocultural approach is to explicate the relationships between
human action, on the one hand, and the cultural, institutional, and historical
contexts in which this action occurs, on the other” (p. 24). Wertsch’s ideas
are particularly relevant to this article because the cultural, institutional, and
historical contexts in which the chosen events were situated are complex and
multi-layered.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Theoretical Conceptions of Narrative
Bakhtin and Wertsch posited that narratives are constructed in conversa-

tion with stories told by others. Therefore, a person’s words and ideas can
never truly be their own. Bakhtin’s (1984) theory of “polyphony,” or “multi-
voicedness,” explained that, when speaking, a person uses the voices, ideas, or
words of other people. His conception of “double-directed” discourse as
“incorporating a relationship to someone else’s utterance” (p. 185) described
how it is in the speaking and appropriation of others’ words that the speaker
creates their own specific meanings and interpretations of the words—and
subsequently the object of the words.
Wertsch (1991) expanded on Bakhtin’s work by positing that historical,
cultural, and institutional contexts influence discourse: “Mediated action
is inextricably linked to historical, cultural, and institutional settings” (1991,
p. 144). He explained that the intersection of people, discourse, and context
inextricably act together to create meaning and that
it is essential to recognize the role [cultural tools] play in shaping human

action. Only with such recognition are we likely to ask essential
questions about why certain cultural tools and not others are employed
and about who it is that has decided which cultural tools are to be used.
(Wertsch, 1998, p. 42)
Students’ Construction of Heritage Narratives 159
Our understandings of events past and present are shaped through the
stories we hear and the meanings we attach to those stories about those events.
Importantly, Wertsch (2002) noted that “the mastery of textual resources
concerns knowing how to use them” (p. 119). While students may have access
to specific narratives, or parts of narratives, from their families or their
teachers, they may not have the mastery to make sense of and use those
narratives to create a larger sense of meaning from and understanding about
the past. Wertsch (2002) further stated that “mastery is reflected in the ability
to recall [historical narratives] at will and to employ them with facility when
speaking” (p. 119). Throughout the present analysis, I examine not only which
stories students use to construct their narratives but also their ability to use
those narratives to make sense of the past and their own place therein.
Heritage and Collective Memory
Collective memory, a clear and cohesive story that is passed from one
generation to the next about the important moments, people, and places of any
society (Halbwachs, 1952/1992; Wertsch, 2002), is specific to one particular
ethnic, national, or religious group. Wertsch (2002) noted, “In contrast to history,
collective memory reflects a committed perspective” (p. 66). Another way to look
at the memories formed between and about members of a particular group is
through the lens of heritage. Heritage “starts with what individuals inherit and
bequeath” (Lowenthal, 1998, p. 31). However, heritage—the passing down of
stories, mementos, legends, pictures, and other pieces of the past in order to both
preserve memories of the past and to shape the way those pieces are interpreted by
people in the present and future—can also be collective. In this way, different
groups—including ethnic or racial identification, as well as any way in which we
join together, including politics, trades, common interests—collectively engage in
creating and disseminating their heritage to members of the group as well as to
other members of society (Lowenthal, 1998). Thus, heritage becomes a way that
members of the group identify with each other and with a shared narrative.
Heritage is “generated by the group to serve some purpose” (Levisohn,
2004, p. 4) and “suffuses us with pride rather than shame” (Kammen, 1991, as
cited in Boym, 2011, p. 453). Heritage is one mechanism by which a group of
people can generate feelings of pride, connection, and belonging around a
shared past, no matter how painful or violent that past may have been.
Therefore, heritage and collective memory are sometimes positioned in oppo-
sition to history (Nora, 1989; Novick, 1999; Wertsch, 2002). Nora (1989)
explained how memory naturally links the past with the present, constantly
changing to meet the needs of group members: “Memory is a perpetually
actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present; history is a
representation of the past” (p. 8). Lowenthal (1998) characterized the relation-
ship between heritage and history similarly, and his point that heritage belongs
to “select groups” is particularly relevant. Heritage belongs to a particular
160 Levy
group and is a mechanism by which a group can sustain itself through

generations. It allows for a broad and inclusive understanding of how mem-
bers of a group relate to the group as well how they understand and learn both
about and from the past. Heritage encompasses elements of identity, belong-
ing, and community related to the group that both inform and are informed by
the group’s collective memory.
The fine line between history and heritage blurs, however, in the public
school history classroom. History curricula are often simplified and distilled
into one clean narrative, particularly in the case of national history. Infused in
this narrative is a sense of national pride (Barton & Levstik, 2004; VanSledright,
2008; Zembylas & Bekerman, 2008). The prevalence of the official narrative
has not dissipated despite a significant push toward historical thinking, the
examination of multiple perspectives, and the analysis of primary sources in
the history classroom.
Emotion
Students’ emotions play a crucial role in their understanding of heritage

histories. In their review of literature addressing emotion in social studies
education research, Sheppard, Katz, and Grosland (2015) found that “emotions
are not discussed explicitly or in depth” (p. 157), even in the research that
addresses emotion in the social studies classroom. The majority of the existing
work has focused on historical empathy (Brooks, 2011; Endacott, 2010;
Foster & Yeager, 1998). These studies are helpful, but they focus on students
developing empathy for historical others, not their own heritage groups.
Helmsing (2014) explored the emotions of pride and shame inherent in
civics and history curricula in the United States. He elucidated how affect and
historical thinking are linked through student identities:
Affect and emotion are useful constructs in considering how students

and teachers engage with America as a historical narrative when differ-
ent perspectives emerge and conflict with their various subject positions
(gendered, political, and economic) and how such perspectives produce
and violate various dispositions and sensibilities. (p. 135)
Though he focused specifically on national history and narrative,

Helmsing’s work is instructive in illustrating how and why students may
respond emotionally to histories.
Zembylas considered the role of affect in the teaching of traumatic
histories (Zembylas, 2006, 2014; Zembylas & Boler, 2002). He urged teachers
and researchers to carefully consider the powerful and important roles emotion
can and does play in the teaching and learning of history. His conception of an
“interactionist” approach (Zemblyas, 2007) to theorizing and researching
emotions is helpful. This conception of emotion in the classroom allows the
researcher to examine emotions as they are constructed between teachers and

students. Importantly, he “suggest[ed] that we should look closer at varying
contexts in educational settings and investigate the emotional practices of
teachers and students as well as what these practices do [emphasis in original]
on teachers and students” (Zembylas, 2007, p. 69). The present study
allows an examination of emotion in connection to heritage narratives, school
history narratives, and identity as the students examine and consider their
heritage histories.
Theorists such as Bakhtin, Wertsch, and Zembylas help us to understand
that the work students do to make sense of heritage histories is complex,
dynamic, and often shrouded. History, heritage, narrative, identity, and emotion
are each complicated, multifaceted concepts in isolation. The present analysis
acknowledges that students negotiate all five concepts when they encounter
heritage histories. Students enter their public history classrooms with existing
narratives that may or may not feel complete; may be entwined with students’
identities, both as individuals and as members of heritage communities; and
may elicit or act upon strong emotions. The present study acknowledges the
multifaceted and shifting contexts in which we ask students to “learn” heritage
histories in school.
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
A rich body of research has examined students’ constructions of historical

narratives. Much of this research has focused on how students’ interactions with
history are impacted by their racial, ethnic, national, and religious identities
(Barton & Levstik, 1998; Epstein, 1998, 2000, 2009; Peck, 2010; Schweber,
2008; Terzian & Yeager, 2007; Wills, 1996) as well as the myriad contexts (home,
school, community, media) in which these interactions occur (Wineburg, 2000,
2001). These studies have revealed the importance of considering students’
backgrounds when looking at their interpretations of national history.
The voices influencing students’ historical thinking and understanding are
multiple, shifting, and sometimes competing. Barton and McCully (2010)
found that “students navigated among these multiple sources in a conscious
attempt to refine and extend their historical understanding” (p. 156), the
sources being “home, school, popular culture, and the community” (p. 156).
Wineburg, Mosborg, Porat, and Duncan’s (2007) qualitative study of multi-
cultural U.S. youth demonstrated the prevalence of a “cultural curriculum” in
students’ constructions of narratives about the Vietnam War. Their findings
indicated that students adeptly filter information from multiple sources
and develop historical narratives that accommodate multiple, sometimes
contradictory, perspectives.
Students’ ethnic, racial, national, and religious identities also influence
historical understanding. Epstein (1998, 2000, 2009) found that European
162 Levy
American students did not see disparities between the histories they learned
from their families and those learned at school, while African American
students were less likely to see cohesion between what they had heard from
family members and what they heard from their teachers and textbooks.
Importantly, she found that African American students were more likely to
ground their national narratives in the stories and perspectives of their families
and communities than in the official history they learned in school. Few
studies have looked explicitly at how first and second generation immigrant
students develop narratives about national history. Looking at Korean and
Korean American students in U.S. schools, An (2009) found that school was
the primary source of information about U.S. history for students from several
migration backgrounds. Goldberg (2013) found that “students are eager to
discuss and capable of discussing charged identity-relevant topics” (p. 57).
This work is particularly relevant because Goldberg looked specifically at
students making sense of history related to their Mizrahi and Ashkenazi ethnic
identities. Halvorsen, Harris, Aponte-Martínez, and Frasier (2016) and Harris,
Halvoren, and Aponte-Martínez (2016) found that the majority of Latinx high
school students in their study were more interested in heritage histories than
other histories, while the students’ emotional responses to heritage histories
sometimes inhibited their abilities to engage in historical thinking practices.
Peck’s (2010) phenomenographic study of ethnically diverse 12th-grade
students in Canada found that the students’ self-described ethnic identities
impacted their understanding of Canadian history and their construction of a
Canadian narrative. She noted that “the students’ ethnic identities influenced
both their decisions about significance and the narrative template they used to
locate themselves in the nation’s past” (p. 607). The students were able to talk
about how their ethnic identities influenced their interpretation of past events
and how they situated those events within a broader national narrative. Seixas
(1993) investigated how minority students in a multicultural setting assimi-
lated school and family histories. He found that the “students’ social studies
classes have been apparently unable to integrate the insights from their family
experiences into their formal historical study” (p. 321). Seixas compellingly
argued that when students’ family histories are included within the “official”
curriculum of the history classroom, the students in question are more likely to
be engaged in school history, and their peers are more likely to gain a broader
understanding of history.
Clearly, a strong body of research exists that illuminates how and why
students’ heritage identities impact, influence, and shape their historical
understanding. The present study seeks to further this line of inquiry by
investigating three heritage groups studying three separate heritage histories
in order to develop broader themes across groups and to further interrogate
narratives that are not always included in mainstream national narratives often
taught in U.S. public school history classrooms.
METHODOLOGY
I used a multiple case study design in order to best understand the

narratives constructed by the students about the heritage events. The focal
topics (the Vietnam War, Modern China, and the Holocaust) provided the
primary case boundaries. The school, students, parents, and teachers related to
each focal topic comprised a single case. In this way, there are three cases that
make up this study. Table 1 outlines the primary cases and provides the names
of the schools, teachers, and courses, as well as the month in which data
collection took place (all data were collected in 2011).
Within the three primary cases, each student constituted a case and was
bounded by the people (their parent(s) and teacher) and documents (home-
work, class assignments, other curricular materials) that directly contributed to
their narrative construction. A total of 17 high school students participated in
this study—4 Hmong students, 8 Chinese students, and 5 Jewish students. See
Table 2 for a list of all participants.1
Semi-structured interviews were the primary method of data collection.
Each interview was audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Each student
was interviewed once before and once after learning about the heritage event
in school. Each parent and teacher was interviewed once at the interviewee’s
convenience (see the Appendix for interview protocols). I observed each of the
classrooms in which the heritage events were taught for the entirety of each
unit. Finally, I collected relevant documents (e.g., homework, handouts, stu-
dent work) from all participants.
Data Analysis
I used a grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to generate

themes and categories from the various sources of data (interview transcripts,
observation field notes, collected materials) that were directly related to my
research questions. I began the coding process by reading the interview
transcripts and noting how the students talked about the focal event by
underlining any words or phrases that were directly connected to my interview
and research questions. For example, one of the interview questions asked
students if they felt impacted by the focal event. So, when I read Brandon’s
transcript and he stated: “it changed everything…in Hmong families. It’s just
not some Hmong families, it changed everybody’s family,” I underlined his
words and wrote “impact” in the margin of the printed transcript.
After completing this initial open coding with all interviews, I engaged in
axial coding and generated new, broader codes that encompassed the original
codes. Throughout this process, I constantly compared (Miles & Huberman,
1994) the initial codes with the new, broader codes to ensure that the partici-
pants’ words and thoughts were accurately reflected in the codes. For instance,
after reviewing Brandon’s comments and the comments of his peers, I
Table 1. Participating Communities, Schools, Teachers, Courses, and Month
Grade
Focal group Community School Teacher level Course Month
Hmong St. Paul, MN Garfield High School Ms. Adams 11th A.P. U.S. history January
Chinese Los Angeles, CA Franklin High School Mr. Larson 9th World history March
Jewish Chicago, IL Washington High School Ms. Harris 9th Humanities May
164
Table 2. Participating Students and Parents
Student name Age Grade Gender Place of birth Parent name
Hmong case, Garfield High School, St. Paul, MN. Teacher: Ms. Adams
Brandon 16 11th M U.S.A. Gary
Isabelle 16 11th F U.S.A. Nonea
Pa 16 11th F Thailand (refugee camp) Mayb
Theresa 16 11th F U.S.A. Valerieb
Chinese case, Franklin High School, Los Angeles, CA. Teacher: Mr. Larson
Calvin 14 9th M U.S.A. David
Emily 15 10th F U.S.A. Francinec
Grace 14 9th F China Harriet
Joseph 14 9th M China Ileneb
Lin 14 9th F U.S.A. Martin
Naomi 14 9th F China Juliab
Olivia 15 9th F China Pamela
Zachary 14 9th M U.S.A. Rob & Laura
Jewish case, Washington High School, Chicago, IL. Teacher: Ms. Harris
Aaron 15 9th A U.S.A. Barbara
Deborah 14 9th F U.S.A. Eli
Michelle 14 9th F U.S.A. Nadine
Ryan 14 9th M U.S.A. Carlac
Sophia 14 9th F U.S.A. Wendy
a
Isabelle’s father’s ill health ultimately prevented him from participating in the
interview process.
b
These parents were interviewed with the assistance of an interpreter.
c
Two parents chose to answer the interview questions via email rather than participate
in in-person interviews. Both parents cited their busy schedules and many commitments
as reasons why they were unable to participate in the full interviews.
developed the code “why we’re here,” which encompassed all of the Hmong
students’ ideas about one of the impacts of the Vietnam War. During this
process, I constantly referred to the participants’ words in order to make sure
that the codes were truly representative of their ideas and understandings.
Finally, I engaged in selective coding from the axial codes and, again,
compared the themes identified during this final round of coding with both
sets of prior codes. As the analysis progressed, I was vigilant in continuing to
compare students’ words between and among cases as I built themes from the
axial and open codes. To aid in this process, I created a table that made it
easier to compare the themes across cases (see Table 3 below).
I color-coded the themes that seemed similar and then returned to the
interview transcripts to make sure that the cross-case themes I had developed
were representative of the students’ words. For example, after looking at the
themes across cases, I could see that one theme in each case elucidated the
166 Levy
Table 3. Excerpt of Selective Coding Cross-Case Comparison
Vietnam War Modern China Holocaust
“Family comes first” “Dinner table conversation” “It’s a horrible event”

“Everyone has a role” “I’m not entirely sure” Never again
Fuzziness Multiple perspectives Multiple perspectives
“I don’t really, really care “The Beijing Massacre was
about it that much” so sad”
Putting the puzzle together
Italics—Importance of family
Underline—Uncertainty and confusion
Bold—Multiple perspectives/school knowledge
idea that learning about the focal event led to the students developing multiple
perspectives about that event. I then reread my within-case analyses of these
themes and returned to the students’ transcripts and reread my initial coding
notes to make sure that this cross-case finding was truly representative of the
students’ thoughts. This constant comparison throughout the analytic process
ensured that the themes were representative of the thoughts of the participants
and that the themes continued to be directly related to the research questions.
FINDINGS
Vietnam War Case
During the Vietnam War, Hmong soldiers led by General Vang Pao allied
with the CIA to fight the Pathet Lao in Laos in what became known as the
Secret War. After the war, with the Pathet Lao in power, Hmong people were
persecuted due to this alliance, and many fled Laos for the relative safety of
refugee camps in Thailand. Hmong leaders, primarily General Vang Pao,
negotiated with the United States to take in Hmong refugees, arguing that
the United States bore some responsibility because the Hmong were being
persecuted due to American alliances. These negotiations led to several waves
of Hmong immigration to the United States, with the majority of the U.S.
Hmong population now concentrated primarily in California and the Midwest
(Hillmer, 2010).
Garfield High School was one of 13 high schools in a large, urban district
in St. Paul, Minnesota. During the 2010–2011 school year, 46% of Garfield’s
1,669 students identified as Asian, the largest population in the school (29%
identified as Black, 14% as White, 10% as Hispanic, and 2% as American
Indian). As the Twin Cities have one of the largest Hmong populations in the
United States (Ngo, 2006), it is likely that a significant number of the Asian
students at Garfield identified as Hmong.
Ms. Adams, who had more than 20 years of experience teaching in the Twin
Cities, was a compassionate educator who professed to foster curiosity and critical
thinking in her students. Based on my observations, Ms. Adams was a fairly
traditional history teacher who grounded her instruction in lecture supported by
PowerPoint presentations and videos. During her interview, she described the
Vietnam War era as a “confusing time.” The Vietnam War unit spanned approxi-
mately three hours of instructional time over 2 days toward the end of the second
quarter. Ms. Adams had hoped to spend two more class periods on the topic, but
several snow days earlier in the quarter forced her to amend her plans.
School history narrative. Teaching about the Vietnam War was included
in the Minnesota state social studies standards and the national history stan-
dards. At Garfield High School, as at many U.S. secondary schools, the
Vietnam War was taught in U.S. history classes and typically focused on the
actions taken by, and the impact of the war on, the U.S. government and
citizens. Less attention was paid to the experiences of those living in Southeast
Asia, including Hmong people (Berman, 1988; Wineburg et al., 2007). While
there have been calls for more well-rounded, inquiry-based teaching with
multiple perspectives about the Vietnam War (DeRose, 2007; McMurray,
2007; Murray, 2004), Ms. Adams’s teaching of the Vietnam War in her A.P.
U.S. History class at Garfield High School mirrored the typical narrative.
The Secret War was mentioned twice in Ms. Adams’s classroom during a
PowerPoint lecture. While showing a map of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, she
explained how the North Vietnamese used the trail to route soldiers and
supplies to South Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia and noted that the
process “as you know, pulls Laos into the war.” Later in the lecture, Ms.
Adams mentioned Nixon’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Southeast
Asia, leaving the ground war to the South Vietnamese in Vietnam and the
Hmong in Laos. She prompted Hmong students to contribute to this conversa-
tion by saying that Nixon employed “as you know, the Hmong under the
direction of…” at which point she waited for a student to say “General Vang
Pao.” Brandon was the first student to speak and correctly identified the
Hmong leader. Ms. Adams quickly explained that the CIA hired Hmong
soldiers, that most Americans knew nothing about the Secret War until
Hmong refugees started arriving in the United States in the 1980s, and that
some people still know nothing about it. These two moments, couched in a
90 minute lecture, comprised Ms. Adams’s teaching about the Secret War.
Heritage narrative. Based on the stories and anecdotes told by the
Hmong students, the heritage narrative about the Secret War was primarily
one of the refugee experience. As Brandon said in his first interview, the
Vietnam War
168 Levy
made history ‘cause like of the Hmong refugees moving and like, just,
I don’t know, a lot of people died and stuff … my dad told me a story
about how during the Vietnam War they were in the jungle and stuff like
that, and like, having a hard time just finding food and running away
from people who was [sic] trying to kill them and stuff. So, it was a
pretty scary moment for them.
In her first interview, Pa mentioned that “General Vang Pao, he was a

really great general and he led the war. And he was kinda like the connection
between getting us Hmong people to come to America.” These students’
words are reflective of their classmates’ narratives as well. The Hmong
students talked about their families fleeing Laos and how it was a scary
time. In their interviews, the parents shared more about their own experiences
during the war, but also that they had not necessarily shared all of those
experiences with their children because they did not want to scare their
children, which may be one reason the Hmong students knew more about
the refugee experience than their families’ experiences during the war.
Fuzziness. While each of the Hmong students told a fairly cohesive story
about their families’ experiences during the Vietnam War, specifically about fleeing
Laos, crossing the Mekong River, and living in refugee camps in Thailand while
awaiting passage to the United States, two of the students remained confused about
the larger “official” history. During both interviews, Theresa was unsure how the
events and people she mentioned fit together chronologically. She referred to the
parts of the history about which she was not sure as being “fuzzy.” During her
second interview, she talked about these “fuzzy” parts, first stating, “I’m still kinda
fuzzy on when the war started … I think we could have talked a little bit more about
the Laotian War, ‘cause I didn’t really get that” and later noting,
‘Cause I know the CIA recruited General Vang Pao to recruit people to
help in the Vietnam War, and so, it’s kind of like, we’re having our own,
and then I know a lot of Communists tried recruiting Hmong people too,
so, I’m not sure exactly what the Secret War’s about, but I know it
pertains to Hmong people.
In these comments, Theresa talks about how learning about the Vietnam
War in school has helped connect some of the pieces but that she needs more
information from her teacher to help make sense of her family’s stories and
memories. There is no question that Theresa and her peers had a deep,
personal understanding of the impact of the war on Hmong families. Her
uncertainty appeared to come from her sense that there is more to the
“official” story than she knows.
During her first interview, Pa articulated the complexity of what it means
to understand the Vietnam War:
I mean, I think if it weren’t for the Vietnam War, I wouldn’t have …

came to the U.S. when I was 3 months old, and I wouldn’t have …
received my education, but then again, it has a downside because … I
don’t know much about it, and … I don’t know, there’s just like a big
part of me that has Vietnam War written on it, but then there’s nothing
inside of it (giggles).
Here, Pa eloquently summarizes her feelings and those of her classmates.

They have a clear sense of the impact of the war, but they are not always sure
what actually happened. It seems that Pa and Theresa were quite knowledge-
able of and influenced by the collective memory in the Hmong community in
St. Paul focused on the refugee experience. As Pa’s statement shows, it seems
that the students were looking for their teacher to fill in the macro history that
they did not learn from their families. While both students felt that they gained
knowledge from Ms. Adams’s teaching, they were both still left with questions
at the conclusion of the lesson, which points to the important role teachers can
play in helping students better understand histories with which they identify
and which have directly influenced how and where they live.
Impact of the war. Perhaps what is most interesting about the way the
Hmong students understood the Vietnam War is that, despite spotty historical
knowledge, they uniformly articulated a nuanced understanding of the impact
and legacy of the war—that the Vietnam War led to the Secret War, which led
to the Hmong fleeing Laos and seeking refuge in the United States. As
Theresa noted in her first interview, the Vietnam War was “why we’re
here.” However, even those students who had felt they had a fairly solid
understanding of the war prior to learning about it in school gained important
information about the role of the U.S. government. Specifically, they were
able to make connections between political decisions in the United States and
the experiences of their family members. Before Ms. Adams’s class, Brandon
knew that Hmong people had fought alongside the United States in the Secret
War and that his father had played a role as a young boy. However, when Ms.
Adams explained that it was President Nixon’s decision to withdraw U.S.
troops from Southeast Asia, which led to the recruitment of Hmong soldiers,
Brandon was able to fill in the context around his families’ stories:
It changed everything—it changed, mostly, everything in Hmong

families. It’s just not some Hmong families, it changed everybody’s
family. And the presidents, I think they was—it woulda been a better
choice if something else woulda happened instead of, just withdrawing—
we were taught that Nixon, President Nixon just, you know, as he got
elected, he just stepped out of Vietnam or something like that, and I think
he shoulda just continued it or something, to finish it, instead of just
making [the Hmong] do it themselves, ‘cause, they got involved in the
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war already, so they might as well finish it, instead of just backing down
and leaving everything.
Here, Brandon was able to make connections between what he learned in

school about Nixon’s decision to withdraw troops from Southeast Asia and his
own family’s experience. Though he knew that his family had moved to the
United States as a result of the Secret War, the information provided by Ms.
Adams helped him better understand the political decision-making that led to
his family’s refugee experience.
For these students, it seemed more important to have a strong narrative of
the impact of the war on Hmong people and therefore the St. Paul community,
because their lived experience was informed by their parents’ refugee experi-
ences. They wanted to understand the war that led to the refugee narrative, but
the refugee narrative was the part they most identified with and about which
they knew the most. These students’ narratives of the Secret War were more
narratives of the refugee experience, perhaps because it was the impact of the
Secret War that most affected them on a daily basis. That they did not have all
of the necessary information to construct narratives about the Secret War may
also have contributed to the stronger refugee narrative.
Modern China Case
Franklin High School, located in Elmdale, a relatively large suburb of Los

Angeles, was the only comprehensive high school in the Elmdale Unified
School District. On the 2010 U.S. census, 59% of Elmdale’s 56,364 residents
identified as Asian, and 44% percent of those residents identified as Chinese.
Franklin’s total student population was 3,610 during the 2009–2010 school
year (the most recent year for which such data is available); 69% of students
were Asian/Pacific Islander. As the majority of Elmdale residents who
identified as Asian also identified as Chinese, it was likely that the majority
of Asian students at Franklin identified as Chinese.
Mr. Larson was a White man in his mid-fifties with a quick laugh and
genuine love for both historical content and the teaching of history. Teaching
was a second career for Mr. Larson, who was in his fifteenth year in the
classroom during the 2010–2011 school year. Conscious of his student
population, he wanted to honor his students’ families’ experiences and voiced
his respect for the knowledge students could contribute to the larger classroom
conversation. Knowing that his students may come from different back-
grounds and have different ideas about China’s past, Mr. Larson endeavored
to be even handed in his portrayal of modern China.
Teaching about the People’s Republic of China, including the Cultural
Revolution and the reign of Mao Zedong, was included in national history
standards and California state history–social science content standards. In U.S.
classrooms, including Mr. Larson’s 9th grade World History class, the focus on
the Cultural Revolution was one in a series of reforms and programs imple-
mented by Mao’s regime. The curriculum generally maintained focus on the
actions of the government, while the experiences of Chinese citizens were
marginalized within the classroom. Multiple scholars have called for curricula
that emphasize multiple, diverse perspectives about modern China (Lee, 2010;
Stapleton, 2010). Research has also shown that ninth graders were able to
develop multiple perspectives and engage in complex critical thinking when
learning about modern China through historical fiction (Kohlmeier, 2005).
Mr. Larson’s week-long unit on Modern China was typical of many history
classrooms in the United States. Despite professing to value student input in the
classroom, his teaching was quite traditional and relied primarily on film. The
first three periods of instruction involved students watching a documentary
titled The Mao Years (Williams, 1994) while completing a fill-in-the-blank
notes sheet. Mr. Larson stopped the video every few minutes to comment on a
particular event, answer questions, and allow students time to catch up on the
note sheet. Mr. Larson showed the documentary The Tank Man (Thomas, 2006)
on the fourth day. Students were also assigned a chapter in their course textbook
and Mr. Larson’s blog posts on the class blog. Therefore, the narrative con-
structed in Mr. Larson’s class was essentially the narrative presented by these
curricular resources, a predominately Western narrative that documented Mao’s
rise to power, the various reforms implemented by his regime over the years of
his reign, the increasing discord within the party, and ending with Mao Zedong’s
death and the transfer of power to Deng Xiaoping. Ending the unit with the PBS
documentary about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests also contributed to the
predominance of the Western narrative, despite Mr. Larson’s attempts to present
a balanced narrative.
Heritage narrative. Seven of the eight Chinese students furnished a
heritage narrative that focused on the struggles and sacrifices of people
under Mao Zedong’s regime. Their parents and grandparents had told them
about life during this time, and most of the students knew the chronology of
Mao’s reign. Even Olivia, who spent much of her first interview saying that
she did not know much about the Cultural Revolution, knew that people “were
in the country for a long time, like 10 years” and had heard stories of her
mother spending her school days farming and planting. Other students told
stories of their families’ struggles, like Naomi in her first interview:
Mao wants to get rid of the educated people, like if you are highly
educated, he wants to get rid of you because, he don’t (sic) want other
people to be more powerful than him, so, he basically, he took my
grandparents’ property, took all the money, and the furniture and took all
the valuable things and my grandfather, because of this, he went from
Beijing to this little city that I was born [in], and he learned other things
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and he wants to pretend that he’s not a professor, so, Mao won’t put him
in jail, or, catch him.
The students also generally believed that people should learn about the
importance of democracy and the dangers of a dictatorship by studying this
time period. As Lin said in her first interview: “I think people should take
from the Cultural Revolution that they should learn not to place all their trust
in just one person.” Therefore, the students’ narratives were primarily focused
on the struggle and sacrifice of people under Mao as evidence of the dangers
of dictators.
Multiple perspectives. The Chinese students tended to see conflicting or
disparate accounts of the past as offering new or different perspectives, which
became clear during the students’ second interviews, when they were integrat-
ing family knowledge with what they had learned in school. Joseph had a
fairly positive view of Mao and his policies. Joseph’s family was originally
from Hunan, Mao’s birthplace, and in his first interview Joseph described how
his mother benefitted from Mao’s leadership:
Well, my mom is from Hunan and she got [the] highest grade in her
class [unintelligible] in Shanghai, and got into college, and I guess, if
the communist[s] lost, then Hunan—that area would not be developed
much at all and she wouldn’t have been given the chance to go to
Shanghai at all. And so I wouldn’t be able to be here.
Joseph also shared that Mao was his grandparents’ “great hero,” and further
explained: “He led and freed the people, I guess. That’s what they said. And
also, they told me that he also made the people [have] less poverty, I think. They
said that, and [he] made people happier in general.” It is clear that Joseph, who
had immigrated to the United States approximately 5 years prior to participating
in this study, had a positive image of Mao and Mao’s legacy.
During his second interview, when asked about how the portrayal of Mao
in his World History class was similar to or different from that of his family,
Joseph replied:
It was kind of different, because, the [“Mao Years”] movie also made
him look—like more on the neutral side, and like bad-ish, and when
you’re Chinese, you generally look good about Mao, and trust what he
says.
I asked Joseph what he thought about this different portrayal. He

explained: “I think it’s just a different perspective, that’s all. Neither of them
is completely right, but, just more information. Just a view on Mao.” Here,
Joseph seems to differentiate between the Chinese perspective and other—
perhaps Western or American—perspectives. Despite strong, positive feelings

about Mao in his first interview, he does not dismiss the “bad-ish” portrayal of
his family’s hero. Instead, he allows that other perspectives may exist, and he
begins to consider how these perspectives might influence his own ideas about
this history.
Calvin’s picture of Mao was also altered by what he learned in his World
History class. Calvin heard stories from his grandmother about Mao’s death,
which was also discussed in the documentary film his history class watched.
He had a bit more trouble putting together what he heard from his grand-
mother and what he learned in class. During his second interview, Calvin
talked about some of his conflicting ideas about people’s reactions to Mao’s
death: “I learned that the villages were all starving and stuff, but my grand-
ma’s village was crying for Mao [when he died] and like—what? Didn’t he
take all their food?” When asked to think more deeply about that disparity,
Calvin developed an explanation for the villagers’ tears and thus was able to
create a narrative about Mao’s death that accommodated both his grand-
mother’s story and the story he learned in school:
Maybe some of them were just like “oh, we lost a leader, and, it’s just
right that somebody cry for him, so ok, even if he stole our food, let it be
us, ‘cause he’s still a human being and we gotta cry.”
Here, Calvin thought about how people may have felt obligated to mourn
a fallen leader even if they had suffered due to that leader’s policy decisions.
Much like Joseph, he begins to reconstruct his understanding of the past to
allow for the multiple perspectives offered by his family and his teacher. For
Calvin, Joseph, and their peers, the deliberate acknowledgement and consid-
eration of multiple perspectives in their narratives of the Cultural Revolution
was necessary in order to accommodate the conflicting stories they heard from
their families and from school.
“I am confused about what to feel.” The Chinese students believed that
knowing about Chinese history was an important part of their Chinese heri-
tage. They expressed this sentiment during their first and second interviews,
and learning about Chinese history in school did not seem to alter this belief.
Though Lin was born and raised in California, she felt a connection to this
history. This connection was clear in her first interview, with comments such
as: “My parents lived through this time period, so I think I have a connection
to it,” and “I think it’s ‘cause I’m Chinese, so I like to know about it.” She
brought up the idea of having an emotional connection to the past that was
directly linked to her Chinese heritage when asked if how she talks about the
Cultural Revolution with someone who was Chinese was different from the
way she would talk about it with someone who was not Chinese:
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Yeah, I think it does. Because, I think although other people that aren’t
Chinese would sympathize with you if you talk about it, I don’t think they
really understand it, because they’re not impacted by it … So I think when
I talk to someone who’s not Chinese about it, I probably wouldn’t put my
feelings in it, because—I think they don’t feel the same way as I do.
Here, Lin explains what it means to connect with history through heritage.
She demonstrates the emotional connection to historical narratives people may
experience due to their identity as a member of a particular heritage group.
Emotion also played a part in Olivia connecting her Chinese heritage to
the Cultural Revolution, albeit in a slightly different way. Olivia, who spent
much of her childhood living with a teacher in China, said in her first inter-
view: “[China] is my home country, so I’m always gonna be a part of it,
support it … It’s just like, I don’t know, I’m attached.” During her first
interview, Olivia was concerned that she did not know enough about
China’s history to adequately answer the interview questions. When asked if
she was interested to learn more, she stated:
I wanna learn more about my country, ‘cause I don’t really know much
about it, and it’s embarrassing that I’m Chinese and, they ask me about
all this Chinese history, and I don’t know anything about it, and it would
be embarrassing, so I really wanna learn.
Lin and Calvin both described the emotional connection they felt to the
Cultural Revolution due, in part, to the stories they had heard about their
families’ experiences. Olivia instead discussed her feelings about her ignor-
ance of this event. Her words indicate that students are capable of identifying
strongly with a heritage identity without knowing the historical narratives
associated with that identity. Olivia demonstrates the important role her
teacher can play in helping her feel that she is living up to what it means to
be Chinese, namely, to better understand parts of modern Chinese history.
The Chinese students had close relationships with relatives in China, and
several had memories of their early childhoods in China before immigrating to
the United States. As they learned about Modern China, they were sometimes
conflicted about how to view the country to which they often felt a proud
allegiance. Calvin, who was born in Southern California but had visited China
several times and felt strong ties to his ancestral home, expressed this confu-
sion in the essay he wrote at the conclusion of the unit on Modern China:
The struggle between peace-loving, democracy-needing citizens against

greedy, heartless Communist politicians & upper class means much
more to me, personally than before. The things learned from my family,
combined with the events seen on the Smartboard projector, have left me
with a confused sense of patriotism, with pity and affection for my
ancestral home, and natural-born patriotism instilled in me from kinder-

garten. In conclusion, [I] felt nearly nothing in the beginning, and now I
know I feel something, but the name of the emotion eludes me. To put it
in simpler terms, I am confused about what to feel.
For Calvin and several of his classmates, learning about some of China’s
history was troubling. However, as Calvin’s words suggest, the students were
capable of thinking deeply about their new knowledge and how best to
integrate what they were learning in school with their prior knowledge.
Calvin’s essay demonstrates that learning about heritage histories in school
can provide a deeper, if conflicted, sense of connection to their heritage.
Calvin did not dismiss the new knowledge he encountered in school.
Instead, he chose to engage with it on a personal level. It seems that the
emotional connections to heritage history felt by Calvin, Lin, and Olivia
facilitated and motivated historical thinking and engagement.
Holocaust Case
Washington High School, a very large public high school that is also its own
district, is located in the first-ring Chicago suburb of Maple Lake. Washington
High School’s student enrollment during the 2010–2011 school year was slightly
more diverse than the city as a whole; 42% of the 3,060 students identified as
White, 33% as Black, 17% as Hispanic, and 4% as Asian. Of the 291,800 people
who self-identified as Jews living in the Chicagoland area in 2010, 22% lived in
the Near North Suburbs, which includes Maple Lake (Ukeles, Miller, Dutwin, &
Friedman, 2010). This area constituted the second-highest concentration of Jews
in Chicago, with 24% living in the northern part of the city itself. In other words,
almost half of Chicago’s Jews lived quite close to Washington High School, and it
is therefore likely that a small, but significant, number of Washington students
identified as Jewish as well. Additionally, several synagogues, restaurants touting
kosher fare, and shops specializing in Judaica lined the main thoroughfare that
linked the interstate highway with Maple Lake.
Ms. Harris was a White woman in her late twenties with a polished,
professional demeanor and genuine relationships with her students. She knew
that most of her students had studied the Holocaust in their eighth grade
literature classes and decided to include a mini-unit on the Jewish Partisans
in the hope of exposing students to a new aspect of this story. Ms. Harris did
not identify as Jewish, though she had Jewish relatives. She described the
influence these family connections had on her understanding of the event
when discussing her Jewish great-grandfather’s emigration to the United
States: “If he hadn’t left then, either a pogrom or the Holocaust might have
caught up with my family.” She was also conscious of the Jewish students in
her classroom: “in Maple Lake, we definitely have a large group of students
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who identify as Jewish, and I think it’s important to bring those different
histories and perspectives into the classroom.”
School history narrative. Ms. Harris’s motivations for teaching about the
Holocaust were similar to those voiced by many other teachers in the United
States. Typically taught in English, U.S. history, and world history classes,
research indicates that teachers desire to develop a sense of morality and
compassion in their students via a Holocaust unit. Actual impact on students,
however, is sometimes different (Donnelly, 2006; Schweber, 2004, 2008;
Spector, 2007). There are also a plethora of recommendations and guidelines
for teaching the Holocaust (Davies, 2000; Totten & Feinberg, 2001). In general,
teachers construct narratives that focus on victims being primarily Jews and the
power and charisma of Adolf Hitler, and they believe that learning about
prejudice and dehumanization through a study of the Holocaust sensitizes
students to these societal ills and propels students to act against them.
Ms. Harris’s Holocaust unit spanned 2 weeks, as she co-taught 1 week of
the unit with an English teacher. The first 3 days of the unit were spent doing a
read-aloud of Night (Wiesel, 1958/2006). The students learned about Jewish
Partisans using Jewish Partisan Education Foundation and United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum resources (including an introductory video,
WebQuest, gallery walk, readings about the Bielski brothers,2 and clips from
Defiance; Zwick, 2008). The unit concluded with an interactive lecture about
the Nuremberg Trials, Ms. Harris’s pictures from a trip to Dachau, and the
United Nations Convention on Genocide. This unit was a mix of traditional
teaching methods (read-aloud, interactive lecture) and more authentic, inquiry
based learning (WebQuest, gallery walk). The unit essential question, “What
are human beings capable of?” encouraged students to contemplate both the
egregious acts of violence and persecution as well as the humane acts of
rescue of resistance committed during this time. The narrative constructed in
the classroom deviated from the mainstream narrative in one important way:
The introduction of the Bielski brothers and the concept of armed Jewish
resistance disrupted the image of Jews as passive victims.
Heritage narrative. Perhaps due to the prevalence of Holocaust stories,
books, and movies in both middle school curricula and U.S. society, the stories
told by the students during their first interviews were quite similar to the
school history narrative. The students discussed the roles of Adolf Hitler and
the Nazi party as perpetrators, Jews and other “undesirable” minorities as
victims, and noted that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. One
student, Sophia, talked extensively about the stories she had heard from her
grandmother, who fled Europe to escape Nazi persecution. Another, Aaron,
had many more salient details about the Holocaust due to extensive Holocaust
education at the Jewish day school he attended through eighth grade. Some of
the students, particularly Sophia and Deborah, identified feelings of solidarity
with other persecuted groups around the world.
Never again. The Jewish students were well aware of the lessons they felt
they were supposed to learn from studying the Holocaust. Each of the four
students, when asked why they felt it was important for the Holocaust to be
taught in their history classes, gave some version of the cliché “never again.”
When pressed to explain the connections they saw between learning about
past atrocities and genocide prevention, the students often struggled to for-
mulate coherent responses. Aaron, a self-described religious Jew who attended
parochial school through eighth grade and had a great deal of prior knowledge
about the Holocaust, demonstrated some of this incoherence during his second
interview:
[It is important for people to know about the Holocaust because] the
infamous phrase “never again.” [A]lso, just because it’s something to
think about and something to remember and never—it shouldn’t happen
ever again, and nothing even close to it should ever happen again. It’s
really kind of a bad thing, and no genocide should ever really be
allowed to perpetrate—really be allowed to happen, and yet at the
same time, it’s always the dilemma that there’s some genocide happen-
ing somewhere. And there’s nothing that we can really do to stop that
fact, because, humans are humans.
Here, Aaron begins by saying that knowing about the Holocaust may lead to an
eradication of genocide in the future. However, when he finishes his thought, he is
unable to reconcile learning about the Holocaust as a form of genocide prevention
with his knowledge that genocides have occurred since 1945. He ultimately disen-
gages with this difficult, complicated task by essentially attributing genocide to
human nature. It seems that the “Never Again” moral has been inculcated into Aaron
to such an extent that he is not capable of thinking critically about how and why
genocides have continued to happen since 1945. In this case, the imputed lessons of
the heritage narrative are so embedded in Aaron’s understanding of this history that
it seems to preclude his ability to reason critically about this difficult question.
Multiple perspectives. The Jewish students’ Holocaust narratives were not
greatly changed by what they learned in school. While none of the students
questioned their original ideas or felt that their understanding of the Holocaust
had changed, there were a few moments of dissonance for some of the students.
Both of the primary pieces of curriculum, Night and the Jewish Partisan lessons,
impacted how the focal students understood the ways in which Jewish people
responded to their individual experiences during the Holocaust.
Neither Ryan nor Sophia had read Night before, so the descriptive content
about concentration camps revealed to them new facets of camp life. In
particular, they were confronted with the idea that the Nazis’ deliberate
attempts to starve and dehumanize Jews and other persecuted persons would
result in people abandoning their family members. For Ryan especially, this
178 Levy
idea was new and somewhat troubling. In his second interview, Ryan talked
about how he thought this abandonment might happen:
I think actually seeing when they got [to the concentration camp], they
were shocked, ‘cause they see actually they could die and everything,
they’re in a life or death situation. So they—before, they didn’t really
know what was happening, like “ok, we’ll stay together and everything,”
but then they see, “oh, it’s so hard,” ‘cause then you share your rations,
everything, but then—it’s easier to just be one—everyone for themselves.
As Ryan expressed empathy and understanding for concentration camp

inmates, he demonstrated that he was beginning to understand that there were
many ways in which Jews responded to Nazi persecution.
Deborah also discussed the idea of Jews experiencing the Holocaust in
multiple ways. Deborah had previously read Night on her own, and had
“zoomed through it,” as she said in her second interview. Therefore, the more
thorough, directed reading with her classmates allowed Deborah to think more
deeply about the book. In particular, she was struck by Wiesel’s change from
being a very pious and devout young man to doubting and questioning his
religion and God. Perhaps prompted by these realizations, Deborah chose to re-
read Maus (Spiegelman, 1986) on her own. She was struck by the differences in
the experiences of the Spiegelman and Wiesel families:
I thought it was interesting—that for a long time, [the characters in Maus

are] sort of going into hiding rather being in camps. In the first [book]. And
that really wasn’t the case in Night, ‘cause he just sort of went straight to the
concentration camp. Although I think a former maid or something offered
to hide them, but they said no, ‘cause they wanted to stay together. So … I
thought that was really interesting how the different stories turned out
differently. But they ended up in concentration camps the same way.
By reading these two different accounts of Jewish experiences during the

Holocaust, Deborah was able to see how the Holocaust affected different
people in different ways, yet the ultimate result was often the same.
Deborah, Ryan, and Sophia had minimal knowledge of Jewish partisan
groups. All three students identified themselves as Jewish though each had a
parent whom they identified as Christian, and each found the stories of Jews
rescuing other Jews and fighting back against the Nazis interesting and some-
what empowering. In her second interview, Deborah expressed a desire for
these stories to be talked about more openly:
I thought it was interesting that they don’t seem to get as much attention,
even though they were resisting the Nazis. It tends, I don’t know—a lot
of the stuff you read about tends to focus on the concentration camps,
rather than people who were fighting back, I guess.
Here, Deborah implies that the mainstream focus on Jews as victims does
not allow for stories in which Jews are empowered actors in their own lives. As a
Jewish person, she seems to be asking for a more multidimensional portrayal of
Jews, and for a new emphasis on stories such as those of the Jewish partisans.
DISCUSSION
The participating students clearly valued the inclusion of their heritage

histories in the official history of their high school classrooms. No matter how
the teachers did this, from Ms. Adams’s brief mention of the Secret War to Ms.
Harris’s intentional inclusion of the lesser-known Jewish partisans, all students
found value, meaning, engagement, and knowledge in the curriculum that was
directly linked to their own identities as members of the heritage groups.
While those students whose families shared stories about the events were
more likely to center their historical narratives on those stories, the majority of
all students centered their narratives on their identification as a member of
their heritage group. The students who felt that they had sufficient knowledge
about the heritage events learned new information in their history classes.
However, they processed and incorporated this knowledge into their existing
narratives in different ways. The students who had existing narratives
grounded in their families’ experiences did not significantly alter their narra-
tives. Rather, they used the new information to develop more complex and
nuanced stories. For example, Lin’s narrative about the Cultural Revolution
and Mao did not significantly change after learning more about him in school.
Instead, the school knowledge added to what she already knew. Interestingly,
school knowledge may have increased Lin’s ability to see history as multi-
faceted and complex instead of consisting of one simplistic narrative. Still, she
was able to center the story on what she had learned from her parents.
It is also imperative to highlight the vital roles history teachers can play in
helping students connect to and understand “their own” histories. Through
their teachers’ curricular choices, both Pa and Olivia were able to develop
deeper and more thorough understandings of “their own” histories, which
seemed to both deepen their connections to their heritage identities and
allow them a feeling of belonging and solidarity with their ancestors.
The present research builds on Peck’s (2010) findings, as it demonstrates
that students can engage in similar identity and historical thinking work in
relation to the narratives presented in their history classrooms. For example,
when Brandon learned about Nixon’s decision to withdraw troops from
Southeast Asia, he was able to evaluate the soundness of that decision in light
of his family’s refugee experiences. He seemed dissatisfied with the U.S.
180 Levy
government precisely because he knew how those administrative, bureaucratic,

political decisions painfully and permanently impacted his family. Brandon’s
narrative, which grew to include not only his family fleeing Laos but the
political decisions that led to their flight, demonstrates how the students’
emotional attachments to their families and identification with their families’
struggles shaped their interpretations of the history they learned at school.
The multi-dimensional portrayal of Jews in Ms. Harris’s class showed
Ryan and Deborah that some Jews were able to fight back and make their own
decisions, which perhaps allowed them to identify with this heritage history in
a new, somewhat more empowering way. Learning about the Bielski brothers
helped Ryan and Deborah see that Jews during the Holocaust were not just
passive victims, but also partisans—cunning forest fighters who would steal or
kill if necessary, but who also rescued Jews from neighboring ghettos.
Deborah seemed somewhat troubled that this portrayal of Jews during the
Holocaust—as empowered and multifaceted people—received less attention in
the mainstream Holocaust narrative than the portrayal of Jews as powerless
pawns of the Nazis. Neither Ms. Harris nor Deborah is challenging the idea
that, for the majority of Jews during the Holocaust, resistance may not have
led to survival. Instead, they are calling for a more nuanced and complex
imagining of what it means to be a member of a victim group.
The students’ narratives also demonstrated their ability, even eagerness, to
consider multiple perspectives about heritage histories. The students generally
embraced the idea of multiple perspectives and, when faced with seemingly
contradictory accounts, created explanations for why the accounts differed.
Calvin provides an excellent example when discussing his grandmother’s reaction
to hearing of Mao’s death. It did not make sense to him that people would cry
when hearing about the death of a man who had starved them. Instead of simply
discounting the idea that Mao’s policies led to starvation in China’s countryside or
discounting his grandmother’s memory, he decided that the villagers were simply
crying out of respect for a fallen leader. In this way, he allowed for multiple
perspectives to work together to create his understanding of the past.
Ryan and Deborah present a different way in which students pieced together
knowledge they learned at school with what they previously knew. For these
students, school knowledge did not necessarily contradict what they previously
knew. Instead, it deepened their understanding of the past and strengthened their
ability to identify with and connect to the heritage event. Learning about Jewish
partisans gave them a picture of Jews during the Holocaust that played against the
more prevalent image of a people who went meekly and quietly to their deaths. In
these cases, school knowledge was a powerful tool that enabled the students to
create more lasting connections to the past.
In each case, it seemed that students trusted the information from their
families and their teachers in relatively equal measure, which is somewhat
surprising, as previous studies (Epstein, 1998, 2000, 2009) have found that
students whose heritage is not reflected in mainstream narratives, specifically
African American students, trust their families’ stories more than the main-
stream narrative. This difference suggests there is further research to be done
with students of a wide variety of heritage backgrounds in order to better
understand where, how, and why trust is built between students, communities,
and schools around the telling and sharing of heritage histories.
Throughout this work, students’ emotional connections to their heritage
identities and the heritage events facilitated their engagement with the history
and possibly allowed them to consider multiple perspectives. Prior research
(Brooks, 2011; Endacott, 2010) has demonstrated students’ abilities to think
historically and to develop empathy for historical actors. In the present study,
the students are thinking historically while maintaining and/or strengthening
their emotional connections to heritage histories and members of their heritage
groups. Students like Olivia, Pa, and Theresa demonstrate a desire to engage
in historical thinking about these events precisely because of the emotions
they feel related to their membership in their heritage groups. For students like
Calvin, Brandon, and Deborah, their feelings of pride in their heritage and
desire to be better understood by those outside of their heritage group led to an
appreciation for the ways their teachers presented their heritage histories.
CONCLUSION
Teachers who find a way to connect their content with students’ lives are
more effective in engaging students and helping students develop and demon-
strate critical thinking skills (Ladson-Billings, 1995). This study gives
researchers, teachers, administrators, parents, community members, and even
students an idea of how and why students understand “their own” histories.
One of the goals of public education in general, and social studies education
specifically, is to help students develop an understanding of what it means to be a
responsible, involved citizen. If students feel and see that the histories that are
important to their families are also important and valued in a school curriculum, it
is possible that students will begin to make these connections more readily. It is
unrealistic to expect students to be engaged and involved in a society in which
they do not see themselves, their families, or their histories. By demonstrating
how students are making these connections, this study can help teachers develop
lessons that make these connections obvious. Students who see their history and
identity valued and included in the formal school curriculum may be more likely
to see that these histories and identities have a place within a larger U.S. history
and identity. The mirroring of a group’s past in the classroom can help students
feel that there is room for this past in their American identity. In the process of
making “their” past a part of “our” past, this country can continue to step closer to
its ideals of equality for, and inclusion of, all. Ultimately, part of the work of
incorporating, including, and valuing new and minority members of U.S. society
involves incorporating, including, and valuing their histories as part of our own.
182 Levy
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Kathryn E. Engebretson and Maia Sheppard for their

insightful and substantive feedback throughout the writing process.
NOTES
1
With the exception of St. Paul, all names of towns and schools are
pseudonyms. Also, all student and teacher names are pseudonyms. Given the
nature of the study and the importance of the students’ heritage, the students’
pseudonyms were chosen to reflect their given names. Students with traditional
ethnic names were given ethnic pseudonyms, and students with Americanized
names were given Americanized pseudonyms.
2
The Bielski partisans were an organization started by four brothers,
Tuvia, Alexander, Asael, and Aron Bielski, who conducted sabotage missions
against Nazis and other groups that had aided in persecuting Jews during
World War II. Their tactics often included combat activities. It is estimated that
the organization saved over 1,000 Jewish lives during the war.
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APPENDIX
Student Interview Protocol
I. Writing Prompt: In order to get us started today, I’d like you to jot down some
thoughts about the Holocaust. Think about what you know about the Holocaust.
How would you explain it to someone who had never heard of it? You may write
your ideas in sentences or bullet points, whatever works best for you. If you
want, these are a few things to think about to get you started…
● What do you think are the most important events related to the Holocaust?
Why?
● What do you think are the most important people related to the Holocaust?
Why?
● What should people learn from the Holocaust? (e.g., ideas, morals, values,
lessons)
● What connection do you feel to the Holocaust? What does it mean to you?
II. Interview Questions:
a. What did you write down?

b. Why did you choose the people and events that you did?
c. Do you think someone else would have picked other people or events?
Why? If your parents or grandparents were asked the same questions, what
do you think might be different about their choices? Why?
d. If your teacher was asked the same questions, what do you think might be
different about her choices? Why?
e. What parts of the story of the Holocaust have you learned from family
members that you have not learned about in school?
f. What parts of the story of the Holocaust have you learned about in school
that you have not learned about from your family?
g. Do you think it’s important for people who aren’t Jewish to know about the
Holocaust? Why or why not?
h. Who do you trust to tell this story? Why?
i. Does how you talk about the Holocaust change depending on if you are
talking to someone who is Jewish or someone who isn’t Jewish? How and
why?
j. What does this event mean to you? Do you feel some sort of responsibility
to this history?
k. What impact has the Holocaust had on your life?
Parent Interview Protocol
a. Tell me the story of the Holocaust.

b. Where does your knowledge of this event come from (personal experi-
ence, family stories, books or film, school, etc)?
c. What have you told your child about this event?
d. Do you think your child cares about this event?
e. Do you feel a connection to this event?
f. Do you think your child feels connected to this event?
g. Are there lessons to be learned from this event? What are they? Why?
h. Do you think it’s important for the Holocaust to be taught in your child’s
history class? Why/why not?
i. Who do you trust to tell this story?
j. Do you think it’s important for people who aren’t Jewish to know about
the Holocaust? Why or why not?
k. Does the way you talk about the Holocaust change depending on if you are
talking to someone who is Jewish or someone who isn’t Jewish? How and
why?
l. What does this event mean to you? Do you feel some sort of responsibility
to this history?
m. What impact has the Holocaust had on your life?
Teacher Interview Protocol
a. Tell me the story of the Holocaust.

b. Where does your knowledge of this event come from (personal experi-
ence, family stories, books or film, school, etc)?
c. Do you feel a connection to this event?
188 Levy
d. Would you teach this subject differently if you didn’t have Jewish stu-
dents? How and why?
e. How does your own heritage impact your teaching of this event?
f. Do you think your students care about this event?
g. Do you think your students feel connected to this event?
h. What lessons are to be learned from this event? Why?
i. Why do you think it’s important for this event to be taught in your history
class?
j. Do you think it’s important for people who aren’t Jewish to know about
the Holocaust? Why or why not?
k. Does the story of the Holocaust change depending on if you are talking to
someone who is Jewish or someone who isn’t Jewish?
l. Who do you trust to tell this story?
m. What impact has the Holocaust had on your life?
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How Students Navigate the Construction of Heritage Narratives

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How Students Navigate the Construction of Heritage

Keywords: emotion, heritage, history education, identity, secondary education,

This article discusses findings responding to the research question: How do

Correspondence should be sent to Sara A. Levy, Education Program, Wells College,

Theoretical Conceptions of Narrative

Bakhtin and Wertsch posited that narratives are constructed in conversa-

it is essential to recognize the role [cultural tools] play in shaping human

Heritage and Collective Memory

group and is a mechanism by which a group can sustain itself through

Students’ emotions play a crucial role in their understanding of heritage

Affect and emotion are useful constructs in considering how students

Though he focused specifically on national history and narrative,

researcher to examine emotions as they are constructed between teachers and

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

A rich body of research has examined students’ constructions of historical

I used a multiple case study design in order to best understand the

I used a grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to generate

Table 2. Participating Students and Parents

Student name Age Grade Gender Place of birth Parent name

Table 3. Excerpt of Selective Coding Cross-Case Comparison

Vietnam War Modern China Holocaust

“Family comes first” “Dinner table conversation” “It’s a horrible event”

Vietnam War Case

In her first interview, Pa mentioned that “General Vang Pao, he was a

I mean, I think if it weren’t for the Vietnam War, I wouldn’t have …

Here, Pa eloquently summarizes her feelings and those of her classmates.

It changed everything—it changed, mostly, everything in Hmong

Here, Brandon was able to make connections between what he learned in

Modern China Case

Franklin High School, located in Elmdale, a relatively large suburb of Los

I asked Joseph what he thought about this different portrayal. He

perhaps Western or American—perspectives. Despite strong, positive feelings

The struggle between peace-loving, democracy-needing citizens against

ancestral home, and natural-born patriotism instilled in me from kinder-

As Ryan expressed empathy and understanding for concentration camp

I thought it was interesting—that for a long time, [the characters in Maus

By reading these two different accounts of Jewish experiences during the

The participating students clearly valued the inclusion of their heritage

government precisely because he knew how those administrative, bureaucratic,

Thank you to Kathryn E. Engebretson and Maia Sheppard for their

An, S. (2009). Learning US history in an age of globalization and transna-

Boym, S. (2011). From “Nostalgia and its discontents.” In J. K. Olick, V. Vinitzky-

Hillmer, P. (2010). A people’s history of the Hmong. St. Paul: Minnesota

Spector, K. (2007). God on the gallows: Reading the Holocaust through

Zembylas, M. (2007). Theory and methodology in researching emotions in

Student Interview Protocol

II. Interview Questions:

a. What did you write down?

Parent Interview Protocol