GSE Colloquium Series in History/Social Studies Education: Jessica Marshall

Teaching for Repair: Examining Teacher Sensemaking about Enacting Mandated Curriculum on Police Violence

As educators, policymakers, and communities debate if and how schools should address contested histories of racial and social injustice, this talk examines the experiences of teachers tasked with implementing a justice-oriented curriculum on police violence. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 34 teachers who taught the Chicago Public Schools’ Reparations Won Curriculum (RWC), I explore how teachers conceptualized the curriculum’s goals, the complex sociopolitical environment, and their students’ identities and learning needs as they navigated implementation.

Using sensemaking theory alongside learning science perspectives on the political dimensions of learning, I ask: If and how did teachers’ sensemaking around the learning goals of the RWC and the implementation environment shape their approach to enacting the RWC?  I show that expectations of “neutrality” constrained some teachers in important – but not totalizing – ways. At the same time, teachers developed learning goals grounded in their understanding of students’ lives, the racialized political context in which they taught, and what they believed students would need to navigate that world. For a subset of teachers — especially those concerned with the well-being of Black and Brown students — their implementation approaches centered on healing, dignity, and thriving in the face of ongoing police violence.

Together, these findings contribute to efforts to reconceptualize disciplinary learning by expanding how we understand students and their communities, and the forms of learning rooted in healing and changemaking that can emerge through transformative social studies education. The talk concludes with implications for policy, practice, and future research.

Jessica Marshall is Program Officer at the Spencer Foundation.  As an educator and scholar with nearly 20 years of experience in education, Jessie’s work has focused on building approaches to civics and social studies education that meaningfully address issues of race, identity, and justice. Jessie began her career in New York City as a high school special education and social studies teacher, later returning to her hometown of Chicago where she served as both a teacher and founding director of the CPS Department of Social Science and Civic Engagement. Jessie holds a PhD in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University. Her research has been supported by a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship.