This is one of the shortest excerpts, but for me one of the most important ones. Consider that there seems to be a consensus that history is best taught by focusing on historical thinking concepts. Teaching should not be the mere transmission of facts. There also seems to be agreement amongst researchers that there is little evidence showing a transformation from knowledge transmission to the development of critical thinking skills.
There is also some examination of why this disconnect continues to happen. Sandwell and Vansledright are most helpful here when proposing explanations for the gap between theory and practice.
Maybe Pellegrino & Kilday (2013) provide a clue. They assert that teacher time constraints and curriculum demands have more of an influence on teacher candidates than instruction in methodology. I need to read more about this, and I really want to know what happens to teacher candidates during their first years in the classroom. For history teachers, what happens to the skills they acquire during teachers college when faced with the pressures and constraints of the classroom?
This is an area I want to study further, so far, I am not aware of any research that answers this question.
Developing the expertise to operate like a historian, to do rather than consume history, is a skill that must be explicitly taught (Sandwell, 2003). Sandwell outlines the challenge undergraduate students face in conceptualizing history as something that is constructed based on the information that is available about the past (Sandwell, 2011). Further, without an understanding of how to use primary documents or how to conduct a historical inquiry with these documents, students are unable to develop the narratives necessary to interpret the past.
(Sandwell, 2003; 2011). Aligning with Vansledright’s ideas, Sandwell (2011) has developed an approach to teaching historical thinking concepts. Her course relies on workshops to teach students how to use primary documents (p. 236). As a culminating task, Sandwell’s students develop a lesson plan anchored by a Critical Challenge inquiry question. Using a historical thinking concept to frame their inquiry, students follow the same process used by historians – looking for causes, establishing significance, developing empathy, and using evidence-based on sources (2011).
In a similar fashion to Sandwell and Vansledright, Gibson and Peck (2020) apply a number of explicit teaching strategies to facilitate the selection and use of primary sources. As well, they suggest explicit teaching of the core historical teaching strategies as outlined by Fogo (2014). Fogo’s work mirrors earlier research and includes using historical questions to encourage the development of students’ historical thinking, the development of strategies to help students establish and connect historical content, the use of various historical concepts including cause and effect, continuity and change, historical significance and modeling historical reading skills (pp. 176-177).
While Gibson and Peck (2020) conclude that their pre-service students report a better understanding of historical thinking concepts and how to implement these in their lesson planning, they make no claim regarding what their students will actually do when teaching in classrooms after pre-service training is over. What actually happens, they conclude, will have much to do with other factors determined by where they work (leadership and culture, schedule, ongoing professional development) (2020). What happens to the teacher-candidate once they leave their program does not seem to be addressed in the literature. What impact do the pressures associated with the first year of teaching have on the teaching strategies they have acquired? Pellegrino & Kilday (2013) assert that with pre-service teachers, time constraints and the demands of curriculum to transfer content to their students play a more significant role than their exposure to teaching methodologies including historical inquiry (p. 19). However, the question remains, what happens to recently acquired strategies when faced with the pressures of the first year?
Whole-Hearted 