Preparing Preservice Elementary Teachers to Engage Students’ Thinking About Social Studies Images

• In Event: Roundtable Session 25
  In Roundtable Session: Elementary Social Studies Pedagogy

Abstract

This study investigates how elementary preservice teachers engage student thinking while planning and enacting an inquiry lesson around a social studies image. Data analysis revealed that the preservice teachers’ choice of an historical or social scientific image was paramount in how they were able to plan for, elicit, and facilitate student thinking. Additionally, we found that different types of knowledge – 1) knowledge of the image context; 2) sourcing information about the image; 3) knowledge of particular image features; and 4) knowledge about students and the curriculum – mattered in how preservice teachers engaged student thinking. This study has implications for how teacher educators support preservice teachers take up student thinking in social studies methods courses.

Authors

• Lauren McArthur Harris, Arizona State University

• Melissa K. Stull, University of Michigan

• Cathy Michele Johnson, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor