Subject Matter Counts: The Pre-Service Teaching and Learning of Historical Thinking.

Abstract

O V E R THE PAST FEW DECADES, the rich and expanding scholarship of history teaching, learning, and cognition has done much to surface and promote the development of historical thinking skills amongst students in secondary, and even elementary, schools. Associated with the works of Robert Bain, Keith Barton, Peter Lee, Linda Levstik, Stephane Levesque, Bruce VanSledright, and Sam Wineburg—to name but a few—a scholarly canon of sorts has developed that addresses the means by which students learn and understand history; this literature also promotes inquiry-based instructional practices that shift student habits of mind to authentic and discipline-based forms of historical thinking and understanding. This focus upon discipline-based practice and historical thinking has generally been situated upon primary source analysis and asks K-12 students to create as opposed to receive (passively) historical knowledge.' The historical thinking movement has been aligned with—and contributes to—the pattern of increasing collaboration between university historians, teacher education professors, and K-12 teachers to improve the teaching of history. These collaborative efforts, given a significant boost by Teaching American Histor>' grant funding, have been almost entirely focused upon professional development efforts with in-service teachers.^ Indeed, the research basis of the historical thinking movement is almost entirely situated upon the pedagogic and cognitive implications of in-