Conceptual Framework
Introduction
Systems of power have a way of omitting brutal truths from our collective histories. Our school books spotlight the victors – typically white, European men who are portrayed as primary knowledge holders -- whereas marginalized peoples' voices are secondary to the narrative or sometimes not even included. The pattern of omission continues as educators attempt to include marginalized peoples’ narratives through critical pedagogy, like critical race theory. which presents a way to understand XYZ. They come up against the political agendas of the white hegemonic power structures at all levels of government, starting with local school boards. But truths are resilient, and these narratives continue to surface because they are part of the foundation on which our country was built. As a society we must reconcile with these truths, and the narrative must continue to be shared. Rewriting history is not a linear process; our stories are inevitably interconnected like a web and should be told in a cyclical nature with the recognition that history repeats itself and the causality of pain that happens in our world. Storytelling is integral to revisionist history. How our collective history and memory is handled and by whom it is retold by survivors, governments, filmmakers, educators, institutions, communities, and individuals matters for the pursuit of justice. I lean on scholar practitioners such as bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Bettina Love, Paolo Freire, Marie Battiste, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Nikole Hannah Jones, and John Jackson to situate my work within critical theory, liberatory education, media literacy, decolonizing methodologies, and oral history.
I am situatingsituate this paper within the context fields of education and multimodalities. However, my definition ofI understand education sees itas embedded in all aspects of society, including formal and informal learning settings. These spaces include our communications with family, organizations, civic engagement, the media we consume, and schools. Thinking of education as something expansive transcends the boundaries created by political institutions, as schools themselves are just a reflection of greater societal control.
While schools can be liberatory for students, they can also be restrictive for faculty, subject to unreasonable expectations and even sanctions leveled at teachers. For this reason, I look to other avenues of informal education for teaching "real history" to lifelong learners.Rewriting history should be rooted in extra-textual modalities. When I use the term "rewrite," I do not mean the physical act of rewriting but rather the ability to change existing paradigms of what is included in the curriculum. Multimodalities is defined as any form of meaning production beyond text such as film, spoken word, oral history, sound, technologies, interactive journalistic pieces, and poetry. Utilizing these modalities for storytelling makes history inclusive and accessible for diverse learning audiences. This ensures that lifelong learners can connect, contend, and understand the complexities of our past, how it informs our present, and how to foster a more empathetic future. Through reciprocal partnership, by purposefully addressing historical omissions and filling in empty spaces of narrative storylines, multimodalities can serve as a means of resistance, rebuilding, and reconciliation within the realm of education reform.
Full paper can be found here
