The Reporting of the September 11 th Terrorist Attacks in American Social Studies Textbooks: A Muslim Perspective

Abstract

This study analyzes the reporting of the September 11 th terrorist attacks in social studies textbooks from a Muslim perspective and reports on findings from a study of the responses of American Muslim children to the treatment of the events of September 11 th in social studies textbooks. Constructivist grounded theory was used to centralize the participant's perspective in the readings of social studies textbooks leading to emergent themes that developed into a theoretical framework about basic social processes within the reading. Propaganda-making is suggested here as a theoretical conceptualization of the processes undertaken by textbook authors, and the category "Muslim reactions" is suggested as a typology of Muslim responses to these characterizations. Exploring how readers engage with the text and how the text engages with the reader in the construction of knowledge, the framework developed in the study can be used to inform a culturally relevant pedagogy and curricula in the teaching of 9/11 in social studies classrooms.