Privileging an empire state of mind: imperialism in open educational resources

The legacy of imperialism has become a lightning rod for the culture wars in both the United States and the United Kingdom, posing significant challenges for social studies educators (Lester, 2022, 2023; Lester and Sanghera, 2024). Historians' research related to the impacts of decolonization has prompted renewed attention to portrayals of empire, particularly in instructional materials (e.g. Riley, 2024; Thomas and Thompson, 2018; Ward, 2023). Scholars from former European colonial powers have been at the forefront of exploring what this means for history education (e.g. Bentrovato and Van Nieuwenhuyse, 2020; Van Nieuwenhuyse and Valentim, 2018; Van Nieuwenhuyse, 2019).

On this topic, providing a coherent definition of the related but distinct and complex terms of empire, imperialism and colonialism is necessary. Historians Streets-Salter and Getz (2016) define empire as “an uneven relationship in which one polity exercises significant control over the others and, in many cases, claims sole sovereignty over all of the policies” (p. 7). Imperialism, then, is “an ideology or doctrine in support of the creation and maintenance of empire” (11). Chávez-Moreno (2021) puts it more succinctly: imperialism is “an oppressive force that also operates outside of its borders and affects foreign populations— with dire consequences for the Othered” (p. 209). Finally, colonialism may be defined as “practices and policies implemented by imperial agents to obtain and maintain control, stability, economic objectives, and social engineering in the constituent polities of the imperial periphery” (Streets-Salter and Getz, 2016, p. 15).

In this work, we use the term “colonizer” to refer to the imperial agents whose countries operate outside of their national borders to control (colonize) those whom we refer to as “colonized.” We investigate imperial activity in the long 19th century (1789–1914), during which time modern forms of empire emerged during the Industrial Revolution, precipitating a greater intercontinental scale and extent of imperial control (Streets-Salter and Getz, 2016).

The scholarship on the legacy of the British Empire (e.g. Abadia and Collins, 2018; Cannadine et al., 2011; Grindel, 2013) contrasts with a paucity of research on how imperialism is taught in the United States. The interrelated factors of American empire denialism (Immerwahr, 2019), American exceptionalism (Tyrrell, 2021) and ongoing American imperial actions make it difficult to portray American actions as imperialist; when acknowledged, they reinforce civilizing rhetorics that American imperial actions were beneficial or positive (e.g. Fischer, 2014; Tyrrell, 2021). We frame our work in relation to two concerns from this field of scholarship: narrative framing and whose perspectives are in the historical narrative. Each of these has distinct implications for the teaching of imperialism.

A key area of concern in recent decades is the narrative framing of a “balance sheet” of imperialism. This approach, which emerged in the wake of the decolonization of the British Empire (Ward et al., 2024), asks readers or students to weigh the positive and negative aspects of imperialism. “Balance sheet” framing typically prompts students to list the pros and cons for an imperial power to colonize other areas (Branford, 2023; McDermid and Foster, 2024). This method ostensibly enables a neutral classroom approach and suggests imperialism is an open question that students can appropriately debate in a classroom (Hess and McAvoy, 2014).

Scholars have witheringly critiqued the “balance sheet” idea (e.g. Branford, 2023). McDermid and Foster (2024) argue that the “balance sheet” approach “may misleadingly give students the impression that this is a simple binary issue … that there are an approximately equal number of valid and convincing arguments on both sides, and that a roughly equal number of historians hold each view” (13). To date, explorations of “balance sheet” grammars have appeared mostly from U.K. scholarship, with the notable exceptions of the work of Satia (2020), who critiqued the prevalence of the “balance sheet” approach in American education, and Jackson (2023, 2024), who demonstrated that “balance sheet” can be found in U.S. textbooks since at least the 1980s.

Presenting students with a “balanced” perspective on imperialism misleadingly elevates Eurocentric and pro-imperial understandings of historical oppression. In other words, a “balance sheet’” acts as a “move to [imperial] innocence” (Tuck and Yang, 2012) by equivocating violent oppression and normalizing colonizers” actions.

Although “balance sheet” approaches prompt students to evaluate the pros and cons of imperialism, such evaluations are often based on imbalanced perspectives. That is, American narratives of history are typically constructed based on Eurocentric ideals (e.g. Bain and Shreiner, 2005; Dozono, 2023); American narratives of empire often similarly reflect master narratives of “imperial privilege” (Chavéz-Moreno, 2021, p. 214). These narratives are constructed from – and expect students to learn from – sources recorded by and preserved by authors from imperial powers.

Analyzing sources recorded by authors from differing perspectives on history is linked with students' development of historical empathy and moral judgment (Seixas and Peck, 2004). Although students should analyze historical evidence recorded by a range of historical actors to understand how and why people made decisions, this does not mean that students should learn to empathize with oppressors. As Seixas and Peck (2004) argue, we “cannot entertain a relativism that disallows our condemnation of brutal slave-holders, enthusiastic Nazis, and marauding conquistadors” (p. 113). In other words, teachers should take care not to exclusively present sources written by historical actors who oppressed others. If students learn about imperialism without examining the perspectives of people who were subject to violent imperialist exploitation, they are unlikely to form moral judgments rooted in the humanity of the oppressed.

Scholars have described curricular narratives that legitimize colonizers' perspectives on history and erase Indigenous Peoples as “settler colonial grammars” (e.g. Calderon, 2014; Conrad, 2019; Sabzalian, 2019). Although distinctions can be made between domestic settler colonialism and imperialism abroad (e.g. Arneil, 2024; Streets-Salter and Getz, 2016; Tuck and Yang, 2012), we apply these logics to consider whose perspectives are included in historical narratives about foreign imperialism. We expand on Conrad's (2019) analysis of the Big History Project and Crowley and King's (2018) guidelines for critical inquiry to explore the ways in which instructional materials about foreign imperialism include sources recorded by authors from imperial powers as well as authors from colonized lands. The ways that materials include – or omit – sources authored by people from differing perspectives can contribute to or challenge the erasure of people and nations who experienced imperialism.

History teachers in the United States are increasingly relying on “online teaching materials and open educational resources” (AHA, 2024, p. 11), such as textbooks, lesson plans and multimedia collections. Secondary teachers, in particular, are decreasingly using print materials, instead accessing digital collections as part of their lesson planning process (Gross et al., 2024). American history teachers report commonly using no-cost OERs, such as C3 Teachers (30% of teachers), DIG (52% of teachers) and PBS Learning Media (79% of teachers) (AHA, 2024). Because the AHA only studied American history, they did not report data for the OER Project, which specializes in world history (Dunn et al., 2016; Harris, 2014; Johnston, 2005).

OERs come in a variety of formats, ranging from lesson plans with teacher-facing scripts to sets of sources without much guidance for teachers' implementation (AHA, 2024). Wiley and Hilton (2018) advise that teachers utilizing OERs can “retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute” (p. 134) OERs for their teaching context. The limited research on teachers' use of OERs suggests that teachers seldom modify (e.g. revise or remix) OERs to be relevant to their students (e.g. Arispe et al., 2025; Flores et al., 2024). Because teachers report having insufficient time to select or modify OERs before using them (e.g. Kuo and Kuo, 2025; Shreiner and Guzdial, 2022; Tang, 2020), teachers who use OERs may likely implement them as-is without revising or remixing the materials.

A growing body of research has analyzed these oft-used resources. One line of research examines the focus skills and expectations for literacy in OERs. Three studies analyzed materials on C3 Teachers (i.e. Brugar et al., 2024; Cuenca, 2021; Roberts et al., 2024). Finholm and Shreiner (2022) analyzed open-access lessons on eight websites, including C3 Teachers and Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), the previous name of DIG, to examine their use of data visualizations. The authors emphasize that open-access educational resources should not be considered plug-and-play: the materials have limitations, should be modified and teachers will likely need support to learn how to modify the resources.

Another line of research has examined the content of OERs. Evers et al. (2025) researched the representation of women in DIG materials, finding that the materials frequently marginalized female historical actors. Similarly, Conrad (2019) examined OER Project's Big History Project, finding the materials often used settler colonial grammars. In their analysis of 311 inquiries, including on C3 Teachers, Krutka and Hlavacik (2025) found nearly half of the reviewed materials included flaws that could harm students, such as prompting students to justify unjust settler colonialism. These studies highlight how instructional materials can further marginalize people from historically marginalized communities.

We draw on postcolonial theory, especially as it has been applied by scholars of imperialism (for a comparison of postcolonial, decolonial, Indigenous studies and Critical Race Theory frameworks, see Andreotti, 2011). This literature critiques justifications of imperialism that rest on civilizing narratives that empires arose for the betterment of colonized peoples. Fanon’s (1963) The Wretched of the Earth powerfully illustrated the degrading effects of colonialism on the colonized, both on individual and collective levels. Said (1978) furthered postcolonial theory by implicating Western knowledge construction and epistemologies in the furtherance of imperial and colonial goals. Postcolonial theory holds that imperial rule was maintained not just by political and economic means, but by epistemological, linguistic, cultural, psychological and structural tools. Postcolonial theory frames imperialism as an ongoing project of cultural, political and economic domination that privileges colonizers and exploits the colonized (e.g. Hopkins, 2018; Immerwahr, 2019; Tyrrell, 2021; Vera and Fuchs, 2019).

Postcolonial theory reveals a great deal about the nature of the imperial encounter in the modern world. Education has played an important role in entrenching existing social hierarchies, including imperial power (Ballantyne, 2023). Blaut (1993) argues that education has served to further a colonizer's view of the world, an insight further developed by Willinsky (1998). Despite the increasing diversity of the U.S. population, Dozono (2020) contends that “White supremacy functions as the underlying force shaping the rules (or grammars) of the game, determining who/what is important in the history of the world, and the relations between those entities worthy of mention” (p. 1). We utilize postcolonial theory as a lens to examine who/what is valued in OERs about imperialism.

We conducted a content analysis (Krippendorff, 2004) of OER materials relating to foreign imperialism during the long 19th century (Stearns, 2009). We examined all available resources on the websites of C3 Teachers (n = 265 inquiries), Digital Inquiry Group (n = 191 lessons), PBS Learning Media (n = 230 materials from World History “Age of Revolutions (1750–1914)” and n = 63 materials from U.S. History “1870–1900, Foreign Relations”) and lessons from OER Project (i.e. World History Origins (n = 63), World History 1200 (n = 65), World History 1750 (n = 58) and AP World History (n = 85)). We then examined each of the 776 sets of materials to determine if it was intended to be taught in relation to imperialism in the long 19th century. This yielded 46 sets of instructional materials about imperialism ( Appendix). Each reviewed site had at least five sets of materials (Table 1).

After we downloaded all instructional materials for review, we analyzed the materials. We designed our coding scheme to account for the different structures of lessons, including numeric counts of sources, the perspectives reflected in sources, questions about historical context of the materials and use of “balance sheet” or settler grammars. Table 2 includes an example of this coding scheme.

We applied this coding scheme to blind double code all 46 sets of materials, resulting in 89.36% initial intercoder agreement (Miles et al., 2020). We met to discuss emerging questions about coding and to ensure alignment. For example, we noted minor disagreements in how we operationally defined primary and secondary sources, which can vary based on the nature of the historical research question and mode of inquiry. In one such instance, we discussed whether a source in a historical account of 1660–1783 recorded in 1890 was a primary or secondary source in a lesson (“Was American expansion abroad justified?,” C3 Teachers). Through our discussions, we concluded that this was a secondary source about 1660–1783 but a primary source of how imperialism was discussed in 1890. We applied this logic to ensure all other sets of materials were coded in this manner, as the classification of primary or secondary sources was the most common source of disagreement. Through these discussions, we reached 100% agreement on all codes (Miles et al., 2020). We then conducted thematic analyses within and across websites that provide OERs. This analytic approach mirrors other studies of open-access instructional social studies materials (e.g. Krutka and Hlavacik, 2025).

A methodological challenge of this study – and a limitation of analyses of open-access educational resources – is that the websites can change. Such changes resulted in our re-doing our analysis: We conducted our initial search for instructional materials in spring 2025, but the OER Project revised all course materials in summer 2025. As a result, we conducted a second search through their resources in June and July, removing data from their previous iteration. We caution that these websites may have published, changed or eliminated instructional materials from the time of our analysis.

Some of the OERs include link rot – links to activities or resources that are no longer available on the Internet. This problem was most prevalent on PBS Learning Media, which primarily relies on links to external websites rather than documents that teachers can download from its server. For example, a set of PBS materials about “The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885” includes multiple links that do not work and a map that is not viewable, as Flash was discontinued in 2020.

This study examines instructional materials related to foreign imperialism during the long 19th century. By “foreign imperialism,” we refer to efforts by one nation to colonize another, nongeographically contiguous nation. This emphasis led us to exclude instructional materials about American subjugation of Indigenous Peoples, such as a C3 Teachers inquiry entitled “Colonization vs Sovereignty.” Additionally, our focus on the long 19th century led us to exclude some resources about imperialism outside of this time frame, including a DIG lesson entitled “Women's War in Colonial Nigeria.” Further research may examine the representation of imperialism in open-access materials across broader chronological bounds or by focusing specifically on American colonization of Indigenous Peoples (for analyses of standards relating to American settler colonialism, see Sabzalian et al., 2021; Shear et al., 2015).

Our methodological choice to focus on open-access educational materials does not provide insight into how frequently teachers use these resources or how teachers use them. As a result, we do not make claims about what is taught or learned about imperialism, instead highlighting the opportunities and risks of open-access educational materials.

Positioning and positionality, wherein scholars interrogate how their identities shape their methodological approach, are essential for research relating to oppression, as scholars can benefit from and reproduce the inequities they intend to oppose (Boveda and Annamma, 2023). As Andreotti (2011) argued, authors should reveal their geographic location and imperial experience, as there “is no ‘outside’ position where one can launch a critique without being implicated in it” (p. 65). Consequently, we engaged in ongoing reflections on how our identities implicate us in imperialism and informed our data collection and analysis.

We are white scholars born in the United States, where we have benefitted from our country's empire and from our position in the Global North. Both authors were taught narratives of American exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny and American expansionism as a force for good. Since completing K-12, each author sought to challenge and expand their limited understandings of America and imperialism by reading historical accounts from diverse perspectives, including from scholars of postcolonial theory. We draw on these educational experiences in hopes of improving education, so students have more opportunities to interrogate and challenge narratives of the “benefits” of imperialism.

We approach our analysis from distinct professional perspectives, as the first author is a teacher educator and the second author is a historian. We regularly met to discuss readings and examine how each of our academic communities shape our approach (Boveda and Annamma, 2023). In these discussions, we reflected on how OERs exhibited similar collaboration, including if there were historians and educators involved in the creation, selection or adaptation of instructional materials. We believe that history education is strengthened when historians and educators collaborate on instructional resources that reflect scholarship of both professions.

The instructional materials in this study addressed many historical instances of imperialism, including the annexation of Hawai'i, the Scramble for Africa and the Spanish-American War. Resources relating to imperialism addressed four primary topical categories: European imperialism in Asia (e.g. British colonization of Fiji, Opium Wars), European imperialism in Africa (e.g. Scramble for Africa, Battle of Adwa), U.S. imperialism (e.g. Spanish-American War, U.S. annexation of Hawai'i) and imperialism as a global phenomenon; the most common topic of resources was U.S. imperialism, which was the focus of more than 40% of all resources (n = 19, Figure 1).

Each set of materials included multiple sources for students to analyze as well as directions for how teachers should use the materials. Materials included an average of 7.6 sources for students to analyze in each set of instructional materials; more than half (n = 204) of all 348 sources were primary sources.

Instructional materials about imperialism rely heavily on primary sources recorded by colonizers. Primary sources written by authors from colonizing nations and those acting on behalf of imperial powers (n = 170) account for 83.3% of the primary sources in these materials. In relation to our third research question, the percentage of primary sources recorded by imperial actors varies slightly by website: 80.5% of C3 Teachers, 88.9% of DIG, 87.8% of PBS and 78.1% of OER.

Because each website has a different number of sets of instructional materials and each set has a different number of primary sources, we analyzed how each website and each OER includes sources recorded by authors from different perspectives (Figure 2).

For example, 3 PBS lessons included sources created by authors whose lands were colonized, 10 lessons included sources recorded exclusively by authors from colonizing lands and 5 lessons included no primary sources. In other words, PBS includes sources recorded by colonized peoples in less than 17% of their lessons (n = 3).

A pronounced trend throughout these materials was a deafening silence from people who directly experienced imperial subjugation. A PBS lesson on “Culture in Colonial Fiji” relies on sources colonizers recorded about Fiji with no sources recorded by Fijians. A C3 Teachers inquiry entitled “Was American Expansion Abroad Justified?” prompts students to identify “the results of US involvement in the Spanish-American War,” but students are tasked to form this judgment using only perspectives from American political leaders Theodore Roosevelt and William McKinley. Deprived of an array of perspectives from which to create informed historical judgments, students have little chance to properly evaluate the complex historical questions they are presented with.

In addition to the prevalence of colonizers' perspectives across instructional materials, we found that sources recorded by people who were colonized often reflect colonizing rhetorics and perspectives. For example, the C3 Teachers material entitled “Do the Boxers deserve a bad rap?” includes sources recorded by Christian Chinese missionaries and a professor at the American College at Tungchau. Although these authors were coded as colonized peoples, they had close ties to European colonizers and conveyed pro-imperial sentiments. The Boxers themselves are voiceless, indicating a misalignment between the prompt and the sources.

Three sets of instructional materials provide an exception to this trend, as they include multiple sources recorded by colonized peoples. The C3 Teachers inquiry “How should we remember Emilio Aguinaldo?” includes four sources recorded by Filipino people, including three governing documents and a letter from Emilio Aguinaldo to the American people. OER AP World History Lesson 6.3, “Indigenous Responses to State Expansion from 1750 to 1900 CE,” focuses an entire lesson on the perspectives of colonized peoples in which students are to analyze six sources recorded by people whose lands were colonized: a government document by Li Shih-Yao of China, a letter by Micaela Bastidas of modern day Peru, a letter by Nanyehi Ward of the Cherokee Nation, a poem by Nana Asma'u of Nigeria, a letter by an unnamed leader of the Filipino independence movement and a photograph of the Katipunan in Philippines. Four of these sources are also used in OER World History 1750 Lesson 5.4 “Experiencing Colonialism,” which prompts students to analyze “how did colonized people respond to colonial rule?” These lessons highlight the potential for resources to incorporate perspectives by colonized peoples.

In the lesson plan for the materials “Annexation of Hawaii,” DIG identifies an important reason why the materials primarily reflect imperial perspectives: sources recorded by Native Hawaiians “are written in Hawaiian, and at the time this lesson plan was made, they had not yet been translated, making them inaccessible to those who can't read Hawaiian” (p. 4). This is an important caveat that may apply to all websites, although only DIG makes this explicit claim.

In addition to elevating pro-imperial perspectives, materials frequently referenced positive benefits of imperialism. Not all sets of materials employ the “balance sheet” to evaluate imperialism, however, and we find variation by website, as aligned to our third research question (Figure 3).

No DIG resources employed a “balance sheet” approach.

Although OER and PBS use “balance sheet” rhetorics relatively infrequently, their use is nevertheless concerning. For example, PBS materials include “A Cost/Benefit Analysis of French Colonialism” in which the teacher is to prompt students to consider “What arguments could each country have made to convince the other that either the benefits were good for both France and Vietnam if Vietnam remained under French rule, or the costs were too high for the French to maintain colonial rule over Vietnam?” Students are to conduct this ahistorical “balance sheet” analysis based on two brief videos with no primary sources. All other PBS lessons that require a “balance sheet” assessment are related to imperialism by the United States, such as listing “arguments for and against the United States taking a more imperialistic role in world affairs” (“Imperialism and the Spanish American War”).

Concerningly, each inquiry about imperialism on C3 Teachers includes a “balance sheet” evaluation. For example, “Was American Expansion Abroad Justified?” prompts students to “question motives and outcomes of imperialism by considering both the positive and negative results of United States expansion abroad” (p. 3). Similarly, “Ships, sugar, and souls: Should Hawaii be Sovereign?” undermines the sovereignty of Hawai'i, instead framing it as a debatable question. This phenomenon is not unique to framing questions, as C3 Teachers included “balance sheet” in multiple sections of IDM templates. In a lesson about the Boxer Rebellion, students are to apply “balance sheet” to “take informed action” “by drawing on their knowledge of the costs and benefits of imperialism” (p. 5) to write an op-ed about modern Chinese imperialism. In other words, C3 Teachers OERs prompt students to use “balance sheet” to evaluate historical and 21st-century imperialism.

In addition to “balance sheet,” OERs deployed other pro-imperial rhetorical strategies. A PBS Learning Media lesson “The United States Gets Alaska” prompts students to discuss “Why was it good for the United States to buy the Alaska territory from Russia?” This question does not require a supposedly “balanced” evaluation, but instead presupposes that American imperialism was good. OERs often used euphemisms for American imperialism, such as “extending its influence” (“Was the Big Stick a Noble Policy?” C3 Teachers) and “American expansion” (“Was American Expansion Abroad Justified?” C3 Teachers). The OER Project similarly uses a euphemism for American imperialism, noting “Southeast Asia was conquered, mostly by France. Many Pacific Islands were occupied by the United States … Korea was subjugated (conquered) by Japan” (“World History Origins: Lesson 7.9”, OER Project); “occupied” connotes less violence than “conquered” or “subjugated,” implying that American imperialism was less violent or more benevolent than European imperialism.

The OERs we investigated in this article often misrepresented imperialism, privileging colonizers and silencing those who were colonized. We find evidence that OERs perpetuate pro-imperial masternarratives through their lack of concern for sources recorded by colonized peoples and a widespread use of language that justifies imperialism, including the discredited “balance sheet” approach. In other words, OERs about imperialism do not align with scholarship by historians that critiques whitewashing the legacy of imperialism (e.g. Branford, 2023; McDermid and Foster, 2024).

This work builds on recent research demonstrating problems with social studies OERs (e.g. Barringer et al., 2024; Conrad, 2019; Evers et al., 2025; Krutka and Hlavacik, 2025). Teachers planning lessons need to carefully evaluate OERs as the existing resources have many shortcomings; those who publish OERs should design them soundly, ethically and in accordance with the historical scholarship. Two ways to do this are by including more sources recorded by colonized peoples and by eliminating problematic “balance sheet” framing.

As Chávez-Moreno (2021) argued, “So long as histories of empire are silenced, masternarratives will continue to construct us/U.S. in a sanctimonious light, and blame Others for their own destitution” (p. 2014). Throughout the OERS in this study, we found an overemphasis on motivations for imperialism. While it is important to understand the reasons behind the increase in imperial activity in the long 19th century, far more attention needs to be paid to the impacts of imperialism on the colonized themselves. Rather than analyzing cartoons produced for Puck Magazine or Rudyard Kipling's (1899) “The White Man's Burden,” which came up repeatedly in our investigation, students could instead read about the lived experiences of colonized peoples in the Belgian Congo, the American-controlled Philippines, the British Raj and French IndoChina.

We suspect that a reason that OERs privilege colonizers over the colonized is a lack of online primary sources. There are several potential reasons for this, including the difficulty of finding accessible translations in English (Digital Inquiry Group “Annexation of Hawaii,” p. 4) and link rot. Despite these obstacles, the past quarter century has witnessed a flowering of historical research on imperialism and decolonization, indicating that researchers have access to exactly the sort of primary source accounts from the colonized that are missing from many OERs. New developments in the digital humanities have made far more sources accessible online, and new translation technologies have the potential to mitigate linguistic challenges. What is needed, then, are more partnerships between social studies practitioners and historians to make these sources more widely available.

This study provides further evidence that “balance sheet” narratives persist in instructional materials (Jackson, 2023, 2024; Satia, 2020). OERs using a “balance sheet” approach require students to engage in moves to innocence (Tuck and Yang, 2012) for imperial powers by downplaying and justifying imperialism. Students were routinely asked to adjudicate on questions that historians have closed for debate (Hess and McAvoy, 2014) regarding the validity of Indigenous sovereignty and imperial violence. OERs using “balance sheet” improperly frame historical evidence under the guise of a false impartiality.

The inclusion of “balance sheet” may stem from alignment with poorly written state standards. For example, the C3 Teachers OER “Was the ‘Big Stick’ Policy a Noble Policy?” was aligned with a Utah standard “Students will evaluate the positive and negative impacts of imperialism on the U.S. and the U.S. territorial interests.” Utilizing “balance sheet,” therefore, is a requirement for students in Utah. Future research may examine the prevalence of “balance sheet” and pro-imperial rhetoric in standards to explore the extent of these requirements.

Though we found “balance sheet” framing most frequently in C3 Teachers OERs, improperly designed questions and pro-imperial grammars exist across platforms. Pro-imperial grammars frequently appeared in lessons about American imperialism, such as suggesting that the U.S. “occupied” rather than “subjugated” colonized lands (“World History Origins: Lesson 7.9”, OER Project). The use of euphemistic language to describe American actions accords with what Kramer (2011) called “nominal” exceptionalism, which “exempts the United States' global history from empire through alternative nouns, classic examples being ‘frontier’ and ‘superpower’” (p. 1358). Although these euphemisms did not represent a “balance sheet” approach, they do exemplify what Calderon (2014) calls “settler grammars,” promoting empire denialism by masking American interventionist activities abroad with euphemistic language or suggesting that American imperialism was not as harmful as other nations' imperialism.

Amidst a resurgence of imperial rhetoric, it is essential for educators at all levels to reflect on how they teach imperialism. Reckoning with the legacy of imperialism is necessary if the field is to move toward decolonizing the curriculum. To successfully accomplish this task, educators and curriculum developers must provide space for the voices of colonized peoples, partner with historians and move beyond the “balance sheet” when teaching about imperialism.

Collaboration rooted in historical scholarship may help educators and OER publishers shift away from outdated civilizing rhetorics and pro-imperial questions found in such OERs as the C3 Teachers prompt “Should Hawai'i be sovereign?” Instead, the field can use questions that encourage students to challenge Western epistemological control (Said, 1978). For example, the DIG prompt “Did Hawaiians support annexation?” elevates perspectives of colonized peoples without relying on pro-colonial rhetorics. We encourage OER publishers to collaborate with historians, as we found fewer instances of problematic language and more sources recorded by colonized peoples on OER platforms created in partnership with historians (i.e. DIG; OER Project) than we did in platforms that allow submissions from content contributors who may not have professional training in history or in history education.

This study highlights the importance of teachers critically evaluating online resources before they use them in the classroom. Teachers can apply the guidelines Crowley and King (2018) provide for creating Inquiry Design Model lessons to the ways they evaluate existing OERs. As applied to the subject of imperialism, teachers can first examine the OER to determine if the questions include “balance sheet” framing. If it does, teachers can find an alternate OER or reword the questions to instead prompt students to critically examine the “systems of oppression and power” (Crowley and King, 2018, p. 16). Second, teachers can examine the sources included in the materials to identify who authored the sources. If the OER does not “include the perspectives of marginalized and oppressed groups” (Crowley and King, 2018, p. 16), teachers can include additional primary sources, such as graphic biographies or newly translated sources. These skills can be taught in initial teacher education courses so preservice teachers can practice examining the strengths and limitations of OERs before working with students.

Without these changes from OER publishers and teachers' critical evaluation of OERs, lessons on imperialism run the risk of endorsing colonial conquest and replicating European civilizing ideologies. Rather than engage in the whitewashing of imperialism through sophomoric argumentation strategies and by privileging the voice of colonizing actors, teachers can help students reckon with the legacy of imperialism that shapes the world around them.