Date of Award

2026-08-01

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Teaching, Learning and Culture

Advisor(s)

Char Ullman

Abstract

This qualitative study examines how race, citizenship, nation-building, and belonging are constructed across Texas history curriculum discourse. Grounded in Fairclough's three-dimensional model of discourse, Machin and Mayr's (2012) multimodal framework, Weedon's (1987) theory of subjectivity, Foucault's (1980) concept of power/knowledge, and Anderson's (1983) concept of imagined communities, the study investigates how official curriculum texts shape the histories students are invited to know and the civic identities they are invited to inhabit. Findings suggest that the Texas history TEKS, SB3, and Texas history textbooks for Grades 4 and 7 work together as an interconnected discourse system through which official knowledge is authorized, regulated, and translated into curriculum.

Across the data sources, race and inequality appear but are often filtered through safer curricular forms such as diversity, culture, contribution, celebration, neutrality, and individual experience. The study also finds that racialized groups are represented through varying degrees of inclusion. Although these groups appear within Texas history, their agency, political struggle, and relationship to structural power are frequently limited, backgrounded, or symbolically contained. Overall, the analysis shows how abstraction and neutrality shape Texas civic belonging by organizing history through celebratory narratives of unity, progress, free enterprise, and civic mythmaking, while narrowing students' encounters with the realities of racialized conflict and exclusion in Texas history.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

319 p.

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Maribel Santoyo

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