The Despair to Empowerment Curricular Curve in Global Education: Lessons From a Seventh-Grade World History Classroom

This manuscript considers Berman’s (1990 Berman, S. (1990). Educating for social responsibility. Educational Leadership, 48(3), 75–80.[Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) “Despair to Empowerment Curricular Curve” as a possible guiding curricular framework in global education. The authors describe how this curricular curve was used by teachers to enhance a seventh-grade world history unit on the Black Death to move middle-level learners away from despair and toward empowerment in social studies. In the updated unit, learners were given the opportunity, through their completion of a public service project, to make historical connections between the past and today, to investigate a real-world problem, to take informed action, and to work for the betterment of themselves and their community.