Penney Clark

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at University of British Columbia

This article examines the controversy that ensued when the Education Department of the province of Ontario, Canada, granted the tender to publish elementary school readers to the T. Eaton Company, a department store, in 1909. This decision eliminated an important source of income for retail booksellers, who could not compete with the consumer appea...

This article explores the potential of the graphic novel as a means to approach history and historiography in secondary school social studies and history classrooms. Because graphic novels convey their messages through the interaction of visuals and written text, they require reading that is across the grain. They have been likened to hypertext, a...

Around the world people confront monuments that celebrate historical origins, movements, heroes, and triumphs no longer seen as worthy of celebration. While an analysis of these lieux de mémoire themselves can reveal historical consciousness, the sites become particularly interesting at the moment when they inspire debate, namely, when people ask w...

There are many areas of overlap between history and fiction. Teachers of history have long recognized this connection and used a range of fictional accounts in their teaching. In this article, we argue that fiction is a double-edged sword that must be handled carefully. On the one hand, it presents compelling characters and accounts that provide po...

This study explores how K–12 history curricula across Canada currently address—and may better address in future—decolonizing imperatives. Following a consideration of the limitations and strengths of curricula in this regard, the article identifies five recommendations for (re)designing history and social studies curricula with decolonizing goals i...

The purpose of this article is to call for a holistic approach to the study of history textbooks. We engaged in an extensive analysis of textbook studies for the purpose of developing our own textbook study framework for the Thinking Historically for Canada's Future project. We found that scholars rely on a narrow scope of research methods and that...

History textbooks are a tool of nation-building and often the only account of particular events, people and issues to which students will be exposed. This is one reason why it is important to examine, not only their content, but the context of their production. Research attention needs to be directed not only at disentangling the logics of textbook...

This article examines the politics and economics surrounding textbook provision in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan in the first decade of the twentieth century, a period in which debates around the publication and provision of textbooks raged in Canada. It focuses on the 1908 contract between the Saskatchewan Department of Education and the M...

The central argument of this chapter is that facility with the past is critical to developing a full sense of who we are as human beings both individually and collectively, who the other people are who share the world with us, and how we might engage together in working toward the common good. Studying the past is both a humanizing and a civic miss...

Visual art is pervasive in all societies, showing up in public spaces, museums, galleries, the posters on our classroom and bedroom walls, and in school textbooks. This chapter draws on examples of visual art from the Middle Ages to contemporary times to address four key themes related to engaging art in history education. First, art is never neutr...

The first conversation is about the nature of history and historical truths and explores the “objectivity question.” It also discusses the idea of historians as artists and artists as historians. The second conversation explores points of connection and differences between history and the arts. Cultural historians acknowledge that artistic represen...

Public commemorative art adorns the landscapes of virtually all places in the world. Communities and individuals create artistic representations to reflect who they were, are (or perceive themselves to be), what they value today, and who they want to be in the future. These representations emerge from particular perspectives on and orientations to...

There is significant evidence that artistic representations of the past are both popular and influential in shaping people’s sense of history. Artistic representations such as fiction, commemorative art, and historical visual art surround our students and convey historical information to them. They are historical sources, but they are also construc...

This chapter applies pedagogical principles and approaches to the arguments about the relationship between the arts and history developed in earlier parts of this book. It sets the discussion of these in the context of four arguments: the past is hotly contested terrain, and should be taught as such; people’s engagement with the past is not restric...

This chapter differentiates between period and historical novels. Period novels take place in the period in which they are written and become historical with the passage of time. They illuminate details about a place and a time from the perspective of someone who is immersed in them and can be treated as a primary source. Some novels are particular...

The History Education Network: An Experiment in Knowledge Mobilization The History Education Network/ Histoire et éducation en réseau (THEN/HiER), with multi-year funding provided by the federal government’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), was Canada’s first national organization devoted to implementing, supporting and dis...

Impetus for the 1908 establishment of the Free TextBook Branch in British Columbia arose from three sources: a new emphasis on social reform in the nation as a whole; the vibrant state of the province's economy; and political pressure instigated by parents, their School Trustee representatives, and organized labour, supported by the Vancouver Schoo...

This study explores the dramatic rise and demise of Douglas & McIntyre (Educational) as a case study of western regional publishing in Canada. During its nine years of life, and before its sale to the multinational firm, International Thomson, this small regional publisher produced a ground breaking social studies series, as well as a health series...

“This book is essential reading for academics, professionals, and others. Diverse and dynamic, coherent and focused, Sears and Clark raise fascinating issues about how art is created and what it can tell us about ourselves and others in the past and present.” —Ian Davies, Professor, Department of Education, University of York, UK “Every history tea...

It took the province of Ontario from the establishment of its free public school system in 1846 to 1951 to extend the principle of equality of educational opportunity to the provision of free textbooks for all elementary students. It took another fourteen years to apply the principle to students in grades 9–12. This study explores the sporadic and...

Este artículo profundiza en los debates históricos y actuales en Canadá sobre la historia nacional y la enseñanza de la historia en el complicado escenario de trece jurisdicciones educativas de Canadá. En este trabajo se analizan los debates sobre los contenidos en la enseñanza de la historia y en los libros de texto, así como los enfoques en la es...

In 1986, Chad Gaffield challenged historians to go “back to school” in order to better understand children’s experiences. This article addresses the historiographical approaches historians have used since 1986 to elucidate continuity and change in the contexts and cultures of schools, and the content of instruction. The history of schooling context...

Over the past three decades, expanding scholarship on history teaching, learning, and cognition has promoted the development of historical thinking in response to the broader academic rejection of history education as a mere function of knowledge transmission and memorization. However, any attempt at defining historical thinking presents an immedia...

Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation is the peer-reviewed journal of the Canadian History of Education Association/ Association canadienne d’histoire de l’éducation. This bilingual, online, open-access journal is now in its 29th year of publication and appears twice yearly. In addition to scholarly articles, it publishes...

Nova Scotia's delayed introduction of a free school textbook policy until 1935 occurred without public debate - despite objections from booksellers and parental concerns about the spread of contagious diseases - and was due to three reasons: the strong opposition of Superintendent of Education Henry F. Munro, the state of the province's economy, an...

Au Canada, chaque province et territoire est une juridiction distincte, disposant d’une autonomie en matiere d’education. Cependant, certaines generalisations peuvent etre faites concernant les neuf provinces et trois territoires du Canada anglais. Les differences en matiere de programmes et d’enseignement avec la province de Quebec (Canada francai...

Educational publishing sits at the intersection of industry, culture and education. Pedagogical aims must be balanced with the need for publishers to make a profit, while also acknowledging Canadian national identity and culture. The events of central interest are related to the tensions between two publishers’ associations in the wake of the sales...

Although not entirely neglected, the history of preschool reform and child study in Canada is understudied. Historians have documented the fate of “progressivism” in Canadian schooling through the 1930s along with postwar reforms that shaped the school system through the 1960s. But there are few case studies of child study centers and laboratory sc...

In 1970, two prominent publishing firms, Ryerson Press and W.J. Gage, were sold to American interests. Since both firms had significant textbook sales and the educational market was crucial to the success of Canadian publishers, these events sparked a crisis in Canadian publishing. The decline in the economic success of Canadian educational publish...

Impetus for the 1908 establishment of the Free Text-Book Branch in British Columbia arose from three sources: a new emphasis on social reform in the nation as a whole; the vibrant state of the province’s economy; and political pressure instigated by parents, their School Trustee representatives, and organized labour, supported by the Vancouver Scho...

I lived in Alberta during the early and mid-1980s, when there was a flurry of feverish activity surrounding the implementation of a new provincial social studies curriculum and the development of teaching materials with the ostensible purpose of promoting a sense of Canadian identity. At the time, I was struck by the extent to which these materials...

In this article, we examine the CBC/Radio-Canada series, "Canada: A People's History," for its use of empathy, specifically with regard to its portrayal of Aboriginal people. We call the empathy promoted in the series, emotive empathy, and compare it to the concept of historical empathy constructed by researchers in history education. The emotive e...

This article examines provision of elementary school readers in Ontario from 1850 to 1909. It traces the conflicts that arose due to the dual role of textbooks as economic commodity and democratic instrument of curriculum. It illuminates the strategies that three dominant stakeholders used in textbook provision to position themselves to best advant...

This study examined 20 th Century Canadian history textbooks authorized in British Columbia, for their portrayals of women. The texts do not adequately reflect feminist scholarship nor societal changes. The nation building narrative of the textbooks precludes the inclusion of women in important ways. In the interwar years, the women who appear in h...

Traces challenges to history's place in Canadian school curricula during the 20th century. Argues that while citizenship goals have provided the rationale for teaching history, history as a vehicle of citizenship education has come under assault. Considers the question of inclusion in the historical narrative and how it has been addressed. (DSK)