Integrating Oral History into a Social Studies Course: Lessons Learned

This article offers an overview of the Desegregation of Virginia Education Project (DOVE), a nationally recognized oral history project in the United States, and discusses how the project was integrated into an elementary social studies methods course. The authors present an analysis of assignments that preservice teachers generated for this course, including final versions of the oral history projects and peer feedback. Our analysis of the final products and student feedback suggests that doing an oral history project allowed preservice teachers to gain new knowledge on the issue of school segregation and helped relate their learning to real world problems. However, preservice teachers also experienced challenges in creating their own narratives of the time period, failing to weave together individual stories and other historical evidence.