Registration coming soon

Join the HRC for a Curriculum Conversation with Sarah Shear, Associate Professor of Social Studies and Multicultural Education at the University of Washington-Bothell.

This talk revisits Shear's previous national study of K-12 state-level U.S. history standards and seeks to answer the following central question: How have the standards changed, if at all, in the representations of Indigenous Peoples and Native nations since the publication of Manifesting Destiny in 2015? As colleagues and Shear have argued elsewhere, social studies curriculum like the state-mandated U.S. history standards at the heart of this project communicate to K-12 learners that their/our colonial reality today is a given—that it is settled— rather than a contested colonial present that young people can (and should) transform. We have noted, “social studies curricula often distort reality for all children, robbing all youth a chance to understand the complexities of our colonial realities today.” Nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia have revised their K-12 U.S. and state history standards since Shear's first national study (aka Manifesting Destiny), and this talk will not only share findings of the new study and contend with the national narrative of U.S. history, but also will dive into with recent Virginia social studies standards revisions. 

About the Speaker

Sarah B. Shear, Ph.D, is an Associate Professor of Social Studies and Multicultural Education at the University of Washington-Bothell. Her award-winning scholarship examines settler colonialism in K-12 social studies curriculum, popular media, and qualitative research methods. As a member of the Turtle Island Social Studies Collective, Sarah is committed to collective action to combat oppression in education. Her national leadership includes chairing the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies (CUFA-NCSS) Executive Board in 2022 and serving as the CUFA conference program chair in 2017. Sarah chaired the writing team for the NCSS position statement "Toward responsibility: Social studies education that respects and affirms Indigenous peoples and Nations” published in 2018. Her research has been featured by the Zinn Project, Learning for Justice, Associated Press, Crash Course, and several other news and media outlets. In addition, Sarah has twice been an invited speaker at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Her co-edited books include (Re)Imagining Elementary Social Studies: A Controversial Issues Reader, Marking the Invisible: Articulating Whiteness in Social Studies Education, and Insurgent Social Studies: Scholar-Educators Disrupting Erasure & Marginality. Sarah is under contract with Routledge to publish Dismantling Settler Social Studies in late 2026. When not advocating for better social studies futures, Dr. Shear enjoys baking and going on adventures with her fur kids, Nico and Odin.