At the intersection of storytelling, historical thinking, and social studies education, Sepideh Yasrebi, assistant professor in the UNM College of Education & Human Sciences (COEHS), is redefining how students and teachers understand history and truth.

Her recent peer-reviewed paper, "From Stories to Structures: Cognitive Mapping and Historical Thinking Through a Narrative Lens," challenges conventional notions of what it means to learn history - inviting educators to see narrative not just as a form of expression, but as a rigorous mode of critical inquiry.

In New Mexico, that invitation lands in fertile ground. Here, history is never only the past - it lives in place names, land memory, languages, and community struggle. As recently as this year, Taos Pueblo opted to rename Kit Carson Park, part of a public reckoning with the historic violence and erasure experienced by Indigenous communities. Yasrebi's work speaks directly to that lived, present-tense relationship with history - offering tools for students and teachers to understand not only what happened, but how the stories we inherit shape power, belonging, and truth today.

"Storytelling and historical thinking are deeply intertwined," Yasrebi said. "To think historically is to make connections across social, political, economic, and cultural domains - to grasp the ways in which each dimension informs and is shaped by the others. We must relearn history again and again: it is not static, but a living structure of human relations through which we situate our own narratives in larger struggles over power, sovereignty, knowledge, and representation."

Mapping Meaning in History

Yasrebi's concept of cognitive mapping builds on the work of cultural theorist Fredric Jameson, who described mapping as a way for individuals to locate themselves - even partially - within vast and often unrepresentable historical and social structures. Yasrebi extends this into the classroom, using narrative capacity and cognitive mapping as paired frameworks for helping learners connect lived experience to broader social structures.

"Cognitive mapping is not about drawing a literal map," she explained. "It's about developing the capacity to recognize how our lives connect to political, economic, cultural, and historical forces. The goal isn't to capture everything - it's to understand their complex relationships ."

Through this approach, she invites students to move from stories to structures, understanding how personal experience reflects and is shaped by the systems that surround it.

Rethinking How History Is Taught

The misconception, Yasrebi argues, is that history is about memorizing facts.

"Historical thinking is not about absorbing information," she said. "It's about interrogating how histories are constructed - whose voices are amplified, whose are erased, and how meaning is assigned to the past."

Her research draws from ethnography, narrative inquiry, and culturally sustaining pedagogy. In collaboration with teachers, she has seen narrative-based work emerge organically - family migration maps, classroom "museums," artifacts that link personal to the global history.

"Teachers were already doing this work," Yasrebi said. "Even when the curriculum didn't formally allow for it."

Bridging the Local and the Global

Her findings highlight a tension: critical historical thinking often grows despite standardized systems that prioritize content over critical consciousness.

"Teachers cultivate inquiry even when policy doesn't invite it," Yasrebi said. "My work aims to offer frameworks that support both rigor and relevance."

Her next phase of research - proposed under a Spencer Foundation Fellowship - will take place in New Mexico classrooms. There, she will refine the framework in collaboration with social studies teachers and emergent bilinguals, linking narrative work to culturally sustaining practices and the state's ongoing Yazzie/Martinez equity case.

"New Mexico is an extraordinary place to do this work," Yasrebi said. "Multiple histories, languages, and identities converge here every day, and classrooms reflect that complexity."

From Personal Roots to Pedagogical Vision

A multilingual scholar and immigrant, Yasrebi approaches this work through lived experience.

"Identity and history are mutually shaped - who we are is tied to the stories we inherit," she said. "This project is autobiographical. It's about locating oneself in history and making that recognition part of learning."

That autobiographical dimension carries ethical weight. "For me, the goal isn't just to teach students to analyze history," she added. "It's to help them see that they are already in history-that their voices matter in how it continues to be written."

The Human Story Behind the Framework

In a world of fragmented narratives, Yasrebi sees narrative inquiry and cognitive mapping as a way to reconnect knowledge with empathy. "The end of stories - if such a thing were possible - is itself a story that must be told," she said, paraphrasing cultural theorist Martin McQuillan. "The task isn't to erase difference, but to trace continuities within multiplicity - to understand how our personal and collective narratives are entangled."

Her framework, she explains, doesn't seek to impose a single narrative but to foster a reflexive historical consciousness - a capacity to read across multiple perspectives, question distortions, and recognize how ideology always shapes knowledge.

"Storytelling joins affective engagement with analytical rigor," Yasrebi said. "It allows learners to read the past as a living horizon of possibility - and that's both an academic and humanistic act."

A Dean's Perspective

COEHS Dean Kristopher Goodrich described Yasrebi's work as both timely and transformational.

"Dr. Yasrebi reminds us that learning history is not about collecting facts - it's about cultivating consciousness," Goodrich said. "Her research reflects our mission: education must be critical, inclusive, and rooted in community."

Looking Ahead

Yasrebi plans to expand her research across teacher-preparation programs nationwide, exploring how cognitive mapping and narrative capacity can help preservice educators and bilingual students read history with greater agency.

"If students learn to see themselves as historical subjects," she said, "they can begin imagining - and building - more just futures."