Paul Zanazanian

Historical Consciousness and the Structuring of Group Boundaries: A Look at Two Francophone School History Teachers Regarding Quebec’s Anglophone Minority

Abstract This article looks at the impact of historical consciousness on the structuring of group boundaries among national history teachers within Quebec’s context of group duality between Francophones and Anglophones. By using an “open‐ended interpretation key” for taking into account how teachers interact with temporal change for negotiating their ethno‐cultural agency toward the Other, this article specifically focuses on the different understandings that two teachers of the Franco‐Québécois majority develop from the past for knowing and engaging with the Anglo‐Québécois. By grasping whether they recognize the latter’s moral and historical agency in time, the degree of both educators’ sensitivity to Anglophone social realities and historical experiences become clear, as do their willingness to transmit such information to their students. On the whole, despite demonstrating a more or less equal capacity to develop plausible‐like understandings of the past, both teachers offer two diverging attitudes for dealing with the Other, which ultimately reflect two main opposing social discourses over how to properly confront memories of the “French–English Conflict.” Given the potential burden of these debates on how teachers (and students) historicize inter‐group realities, the article ends with proposing a means of teaching history that fosters the development of autonomous and conscientious engagements with the past. Not only does this approach entail respecting differences in opinions and choices, but also highlights the potentials of embracing change for improving the quality of common future life.

Historical Consciousness and Being Québécois: Exploring Young English-Speaking Students' Interactions with Quebec's Master Historical Narrative

In revisiting a dataset of secondary school students’ historical narratives on Quebec’s past, this article’s exploratory study examines five English-speaking youths’ historical consciousness as members of a French-speaking society. Given their community’s simplistic portrayal in the province’s school history program, the study attempts to understand the impact of transmitting a Franco-centric collective historical identity that differentiates and distances Anglophones on these students’ structuring of group boundaries and negotiations of national belonging. A repertory of ideal-type tendencies of historical consciousness is operationalized as an open-ended interpretation key for reading students’ interactions with Quebec’s master narrative. In relying on pre-given significations of the past, the only Traditional-leaning student seeks a hybrid sort of national identity and thereby structures boundaries softly. In contradicting pre-given significations, the remaining Critical-leaning ones seek fuller understandings of being Québécois and structure boundaries more rigidly, either seeking to overcome important narrative gaps or amend the proffered storyline’s perceived shortsightedness. As these five students can think the nation in its intended terms, their affective appropriation of Quebec’s narrative varies. Despite preserving boundaries, they betray a desire for inclusion and acceptance. Further research is, however, called for to verify these findings’ generalizability and to expand on their other potential variations.En revisitant une base de données des récits estudiantins sur l’histoire du Québec, cet article examine la conscience historique de cinq jeunes de langue anglaise vivant dans une société majoritairement francophone. Vu la représentation simpliste de leur communauté dans le programme d’histoire québécois, cet article essaie de mieux comprendre l’impact de la transmission d’une identité collective historique, qui confine les anglophones dans une catégorie d’altérité, sur leurs structurations des frontières groupales et leurs négociations d’appartenance nationale. Un répertoire des idéaux-types de la conscience historique sert comme grille de lecture ouverte pour interpréter les interactions de ces étudiants avec le récit national. En se basant sur des significations préétablies du passé, un de ces étudiants de tendance traditionnelle cherche une identité nationale hybride et structure ses frontières souplement. En contredisant ces significations, ceux de tendance critique visent des compréhensions du Québec plus complètes et structurent leurs frontières rigidement, soit pour surmonter des lacunes dans le récit ou pour amender sa vision étroite. Les cinq peuvent penser la nation selon la trame collective, mais leur connexion émotive envers elle varie. Malgré le maintien des frontières, ils cherchent à être inclus et accepté. D’autres recherches sont toutefois nécessaires pour vérifier et élaborer ces données.

Teaching History for Narrative Space and Vitality: Historical Consciousness, Templates, and English-Speaking Quebec

Zanazanian introduces a template-like narrative tool that seeks to make room for excluded minorities in the teaching of school history and to provide them vitality for regeneration purposes. He explores the links between historical consciousness and James Wertsch’s ideas on narrative and focuses on the experiences of Quebec’s historic English-speaking minority to illustrate. The province’s unique context and challenges to providing curricular space for the community inform the rationale behind the tool’s ambitious yet exploratory nature. Simplifying the past to encourage identity building while complicating it to expand horizons, the tool prompts and frames students’ own produced narratives of belonging. It specifically engages them with the workings and uses of history to articulate their understandings and account for their emerging knowledge claims.