Explanations Revealed: How Practice-Based Enactments Revealed a Core Teaching Need in History/Social Studies Interns

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Multiple Ways of Content Engagement

Abstract

While teacher educators have made significant progress in identifying a knowledge base of core practices and developing learning models in mathematics and science, this paper begins the work of articulating one high leverage practice—Explaining and Modeling Content, Practices, and Strategies—in history and social studies. Using student submissions collected across two semesters, this study argues that though interns had received ample instruction and feedback on their ability to organize content in writing lesson plans, cases of enactments of their Explaining and Modeling Content revealed a much different picture. As a whole, the data suggest that many interns had trouble both identifying big ideas and conceptual frameworks of the content and cohesively aligning lessons within those frameworks even when identified.

Author

• Anthony Tuf Francis, Oakland University