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Where am I? How migrant students negotiate the B.C. social studies curriculum

University of British Columbia

This research was designed to find out how migration is understood by high school students who have experienced it first-hand, and to investigate to what extent the prescribed social studies curriculum in British Columbia contributes to students’ grasp of geographical concepts that might give them a deeper and broader understanding of the migration experience. The study took place in an East Vancouver school that serves a neighbourhood of relatively low socio-economic status and high immigrant population. Six grade 12 students, from a variety of source nations, were interviewed firstly to capture the participants’ stories of migration, and secondly, to find out, using a range of visual sources, whether students are able to find connections between taught curriculum and their lived experience. Aspects of the work of Edward Soja and Wayne Au provide the theoretical frame for the study. A combination of narrative enquiry and grounded theory was used to analyse the findings. The research uncovers some of the ways in which migration has an impact on students’ everyday lives and everyday places. Further, it considers students’ knowledge as a potential starting point for developing more sophisticated geographic understandings through the social studies curriculum. Several practical suggestions are presented in regard to finding a new space for the study of geography in British Columbia.

Text

2013-03-09

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/44016

Curriculum Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/