Experiencing History in Teacher Education: the impact of academic subject study on students' professional identity

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Round 5 Teaching development Grant

Experiencing History in Teacher Education

The context to this research project addresses two related and complex issues.  Firstly, within a wider setting, it has a focus on the professional self-identity among intending teachers who combine the academic study of history with a course of professional training at undergraduate level. The factors that impact on that identity have been the subject of considerable research interest in recent years.  But, making sense of students’ own academic and professional concepts and experiences is instrumental in shaping the successful teacher.

Nevertheless, ‘good’ teaching is not a matter of strategic survival. The key question is whether Initial Teacher Training programmes and their academic components are doing enough to challenge and modify student-teachers’ perceptions about what learning in a subject and learning to teach ought to involve.

Clearly, the bedrock to the professional development of young teachers has to reside in students’ security in their own epistemological beliefs and practice. In short, becoming an effective teacher necessitates students’ deeper understanding of the processes of knowledge construction, and that can only be mediated through a disciplinary context.

Hence, a primary focus for professional development must remain with the experience of disciplinary study. Therefore, the purpose of this project is an inquiry into students’ particular learning experience of an academic course of study in terms not only of acquiring a body of historical knowledge but, crucially, in relation to whether the distinctive features of the course resulted in significant changes to students’ learning behaviour and their professional outlook on teaching practice.

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