Ruth Sandwell and Amy von Heyking, eds., Becoming a History Teacher: Sustaining Practices in Historical Thinking and Knowing (original) (raw)
Related papers
Becoming a History Teacher: Sustaining Practices in Historical Thinking and Knowing
Canadian Historical Review, 2015
A revolution in history education in recent years is propelling historical thinking and knowing to the forefront of history and social studies education in North America and beyond. Teachers, university teacher education programs, schools, and ministries of education across Canada are among those embracing a newly championed approach to history teaching and learning, one that promises to supplement the wide range of pedagogical strategies and practices that experienced teachers have in their history-related repertoire, and to replace what many critics believe is an overreliance on rote learning and memorization with the richer and deeper disciplinary understanding that comes from knowing how history is made. At the centre of the new approach is the supposition that knowing history means knowing how to think historically. Students are introduced to the kinds or procedures of knowing that historians engage in, including evaluating significance, assessing cause and consequence, exploring the varied perspectives of people in the past, and probing the ethical dimensions of history. Many educators are demonstrating that it is by actively engaging in "doing" history that students experience, and come to know, historical thinking: the complicated, nuanced process of evaluating the meanings and significance of often-conflicting evidence (generated during the time in question as primary sources, and from more recent evaluations or histories) in the best way possible.
History Learning and Teaching Today: Learning What? Becoming What? By What Practice?
ICLS, 2014
History is intimately connected with personal and collective processes of becoming. It is also a field of contest among curriculum-makers, teachers, parents and scholars over who and what children will be; and this contest has greater consequences as our world grows more crowded and more connected. School curriculum-makers and teachers have never had a monopoly on what children learned about the past; but today, the Internet makes encounters with differing historical narratives ever more common. In this symposium, scholars from three countries (Israel, Canada and the United States) will come together around a collection of unique studies addressing the question of how teachers can be better prepared to help their students navigate the increasing challenges of learning and becoming in today's increasingly globalized and internetworked world.
This paper looks at the historical consciousness of prospective history teachers in Canada. Using a bilingual online survey instrument inspired by the pan-Canadian research Canadians and their Pasts with volunteer participants (N=233), the study investigates their background knowledge, their perceptions of the trustworthiness of sources, their experiences in the history classroom, and their visions of school history. Results reveal that few prospective teachers have extensive knowledge of Canadian history and limited experience with active, inquiry-based teaching approaches to the past. However, a majority of them have very strong conceptions and sense of purposes regarding school history. The paper discusses the implications of this study, notably the need for professional communities of history practitioners.
Jocelyn Létourneau will give two presentations in London shortly. WHEN? September 7-9 2015 WHY? The 12th International Conference of the History Educators International Research Network WHERE? The University of London – Institute of Education WHAT? The titles of the presentations are: - Teaching History To K12 Kids: Reflections Based On A Large Scale Research Project - Quebec Students and their Historical Consciousness of the Nation ABSTRACT : TEACHING HISTORY TO K12 KIDS: REFLECTIONS BASED ON A LARGE SCALE RESEARCH PROJECT When submitted to trivia tests, kids seem to know very little about the past of their community (nation). I decided to look at the situation a different way in asking two broad questions to about 5000 different young people, during a period of ten years, when they were in the classroom: 1) "Tell me the history of Quebec as you know"; 2) "If you had to summarize the history of Quebec in a phrase, what would you write personally?" Analysing the corpus shows two things: 1) kids know more about the past of their community (nation) than we think they do; 2) what they know is as powerful as it is simplistic. So the question: How to teach history to kids in the context they are not empty pots but have a very strong prior knowledge? First step is to assess knowledge kids possess… to discover that it’s very much rooted in their community’s mythistories (I shall define that concept in my talk). o Second is to create a cognitive conflict with kid’s prior knowledge so they are challenged in their historical representations. o Third is to provide kids with alternative historical knowledge structured in the form of “catchy” ideas (so they may remember something of what is taught to them), knowledge also focused on their community’s mythistories (in order to have them distancing from the common premises upon which their culture is constructed, so they study history with a purpose, which is a good inducement to develop their learning interest). o In the paper each point will be detailed and backed with arguments. The aim of the talk is not to go against historical thinking theory but to adjust the basics of this theory with the general context into which kids learn (and use that knowledge to live efficiently in complex social settings). References: • J. Létourneau, Je me souviens ? Le passé du Québec dans la conscience historique de sa jeunesse, Montreal, Fides, 2014. • J. Létourneau, “Teaching National History to Young People Today”, in Mario Carretero, Stefan Berger & Maria Grever (eds.), International Handbook of Research in Historical Culture and Education. Hybrid Ways of Learning History, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. [To be published]. • J. Létourneau, S. Lévesque & R. Gani, “A Giant with Clay Feet: Quebec Students and the Historical Consciousness of the Nation”, International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research, 11, 2 (May 2013), p. 159-175.
From Neglect to Nexus: Examining the Place of Educational History in Teacher Education
2011
De la negligencia a la conexión: examen del lugar de la historia educativa en la educación del profesor Un examen du rôle de l'histoire de l'éducation dans les programmes de formation des enseignants : négligence ou noyau ABSTRACT In faculties of education across North America, the so-called foundations of education are in crisis. Pressure to shorten teacher education programs and to focus on developing the instrumental skills of new teachers has resulted in courses in philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, and psychology being moved from the core of teacher education to the periphery. This paper describes the decline of history in teacher education using the Faculty of Education at Queen's University as a case study. We contend this decline occurred more by systematic neglect of history's value in professional education than by overt attack on its position as one of "the foundations" of the field. We go on to argue that history, properly taught, has the potential to provide a powerful nexus to teacher education programs helping new teachers locate themselves and individualize their personal beliefs in relation to the vast body of professional knowledge that is circulated and recycled about policy and practice.
2014
Ancien Régime, change became one of the hallmarks of modern society, and had (or still has) a radical effect in all areas of society. It left no one untouched. Awareness of the split between past and present took shape in a new understanding of reality, which was no longer seen as virtually timeless and unchanging, but rather as a process involving motion, change, evolution and revolution as its essential characteristics. The consciousness of the fact that there was a gap between the past and modern times gave rise in the eighteenth century to modern historical consciousness, or consciousness that the past and present were different (Tollebeek 2002). This was also the period of pedagogical optimism in which education and teaching (progress, change) found their point of confluence with history (past development of mankind with projection to the future). This is illustrated by the fact, for example, that history was given a prominent place by Nicolas de Condorcet in his educational system, and by Johann Friedrich Herbart as an element of civic education (Depaepe 2004). In the systematization of the pedagogical sciences, with which the same Herbart is mostly associated, theoretical reflection would, for that matter, be largely based on the past. As a result, a historic-systematic approach would be the hallmark of every academic theory of education until well into the twentieth century, certainly in the German tradition. Only in recent decades was this developmental line arrested once and for all by the ever louder calls for "evidence based" information, which not only betrayed its Anglo-Saxon inspiration but heralded the fragmentation of pedagogy's disciplinary identity as a "modern" science. In the last two centuries change has continuously gathered pace. Whereas in the pre-modern era change was intergenerational, and was experienced by every generation in modern times, today, according to Rosa (2005), it is an intra-generational phenomenon. He takes the view that this permanently accelerating change is driven first and foremost by the economic logic of capitalism in which time is money, and money a scarce commodity. There can be no excuse for losing time and so it must be used … productively. This utilitarian principle came to occupy center stage. At the same time, however, the capitalist system created (and creates) a feeling of alienation, or at times even unease, uncertainty. The wave of economic, social and cultural change created a rift with the familiar world and brought with it a loss of footing. This set the scene for a harking back to the past, in numerous ways. It might have taken the form, for example, of a nostalgic, fervent and comforting desire for the past, or of a historia magistra vitae for the present, a past from which lessons could be learned, or a past recoverable through heritage to serve present political, social and educational ends (Tollebeek 2002). Both of these elements, i.e. the principle of economic utility and a harking back to the past, filter down to (secondary) education in most western countries, including that of the Flemish Community, which is responsible for schools in Flanders and the Dutch-speaking ones in Brussels, the capital of federal Belgium. This rather essayistic article will focus especially on the Flemish case, although much of what appears in Flanders is applicable to the situation in other western countries as well. Education must give people more and better preparation for the labor market, so the discussion often goes. Professional profiles are used to model curricula, and the retention of subjects and study fields is sometimes weighed against utility on the labor market. Interaction with the past is also partly shaped in terms of (social) utility and so shaped instrumentally. In Flemish secondary education the subject of history, for example, seeks to offer an introduction to history as an academic discipline, but, on the other hand, the subject must also "serve pupils as members of society", i.e. mold pupils into good citizens