CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION (original) (raw)

As a secondary educator and reflective practitioner at the post-secondary level, I have seen the struggles and challenges that secondary teachers have to face when it comes to creating lesson plans that stimulate critical thinking in their students. My interest in social studies and its associated curriculum stems from my years of experience co-teaching with social studies educators at different grade levels. Bernard (2000) notes that constructing effective cross-case comparisons helps the practitioner see what common thread, if any, is related to the participant's individual experiences in a qualitative study. In Chapter 4, a cross-case comparison was conducted in which I was able to compare and contrast the three participants' themes and fuse them into three over-arching themes by way of analysis. I found that there was a family-like resemblance when it came to the thematic comparisons of the three participants and their ties to the first, second and third cross-comparison themes: (1) there's more than one path to historical literacy: not always paved in gold, (2) levels of engagement: at what costs? and (3) can we all get along?-searching for a happy medium. There's not always a link in shared experiences, but when there is, it should be explicated to show it relationally (Charmaz, 2006). I found that there were important narratives created as a result of the participants' class experiences and discovered that each of their lived experiences was impacted in varied ways that could be expressed through an appropriate cross-case comparison.