Student Teachers Thinking Historically

Abstract

Prescriptions for the reform of history education routinely advocate increased use of primary historical sources in the classroom, as being fundamental to the teaching of historical thinking. Yet there have been no studies of student-teachers' learning how to teach using primary sources. This exploratory study defines the task faced by student-teachers early in their program. It uses recent discussions among historians and philosophers to generate three general characteristics of the task. It then uses these characteristics as a framework for an empirical investigation of the difficulties student-teachers encounter as they begin to design exercises for teaching students how to read primary sources critically and constructively.