Preparing Prospective Teachers to Foster Historical Literacies

• In Event: Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Current Practices and New Directions in History Education

Abstract

Teacher preparation programs often require a cross-disciplinary “content area literacy” course. However doubts exist about the effectiveness of such courses in preparing teachers to meet pupils’ historical literacy needs. This paper describes a pilot course designed to prepare prospective history teachers to foster their pupils’ historical literacies. Final exams and lesson plans of students in the course were evaluated for awareness of general literacy instruction and history-specific literacy instruction. Further, field notes taken during observations of lessons taught by prospective teachers in middle school and high school classes were analyzed for effective or ineffective historical literacy instruction. Preliminary results cause optimism about the effectiveness of this course as an alternative to the generic content-area literacy course.

Author

• Jeffery D. Nokes, Brigham Young University