"What's Your Response to That?" Responsive Teaching Among History Teacher Candidates

• In Event: 34.079 - Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: 34.079-6 - Building Students' Historical Thinking and Reasoning Skills

Abstract

This study investigated history teacher candidates’(TC) abilities to respond to student disciplinary thinking, a practice found to improve student learning across multiple subject areas. Although researchers have explored preservice math and science teachers’ responsiveness, scholars know comparatively little about history TCs’ abilities in these areas. This study uses observation, interviews, and coursework to explore the question, How do four TCs respond to student thinking about historical evidence? An analytic framework that combined aspects of responsive teaching and historical reasoning was constructed and used for analysis. Three of the TCs were able to engage in instances of responsive teaching but all were more likely to respond to student ideas by reasoning themselves, rather than prompting further student reasoning.

Author

• Michael Alan Neel, Vanderbilt University - Peabody College