Responding but Not Responsive: What Can History Teacher Candidates Do?

• In Event: New Directions in the Teaching and Learning of History

Abstract

In recent years, science and mathematics education research has demonstrated that some teacher candidates (TCs) can attend to student reasoning during instruction and respond in productive ways, something skeptics long thought impossible for beginners. The purpose of this study was to explore the degree to which history TCs elicited and responded to students’ nascent disciplinary ideas during videoed classroom interactions that they selected as representing the requirements of the EdTPA assessment. Using an analytical framework informed by responsive teaching literature and history education scholarship, we analyzed EdTPA artifacts from one program’s social studies graduates across four years. This study offers a conceptualization of responsiveness in history and findings that demonstrate some history TCs can engage in responsive teaching.

Authors

• Michael Alan Neel, Vanderbilt University - Peabody College

• Andrew L. Hostetler, Vanderbilt University