Investigating Teacher Learning to Teach Difficult Histories: The Analysis of Teacher Role Identities

• In Event: Teacher Learning and Identity Change in Social Studies Professional Development: A Career-Spanning Perspective

Abstract

While scholars emphasize the significance of the roles the teacher identity plays in their learning to teach difficult histories, little is known about how veteran teachers negotiate their identities and change their practices in the professional development (PD) context. Conceptualizing the PD as “social participation,” connecting learning to identity formation and change (Wenger, 1996), this study investigates how a six-day inquiry-based summer teacher institute, focusing on the history of school desegregation, influenced the teachers’ negotiation of changes in their role identities (Authors, 2018) and learn to teach the topic as a difficult history (Epstein & Peck, 2017; Gross & Terra, 2019). Our research questions are:

1. How did the teacher’s pre-PD role identity shape the ways they learn to teach difficult histories in the context of the PD?
2. To what extent and in what ways did the PD context impacts the teacher’s role identity shifts when learning to teach difficult histories?

We used the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI; Co-author & author, 2017) as a theoretical lens. The model considers teacher learning as “changes in a network of components that constitute the teacher’s identity system” (Authors, 2018, p. 3). The system encompasses five components: the teacher’s purposes and goals in teaching, self-perceived attributes regarding teaching, world view as a teacher, and perceived possibilities for action as a teacher. A purposefully diverse sample of six participants was selected from 68 teachers who participated in the summer institute (2021). Data sources include individual interviews conducted four times (before and after the summer institute and during and after the follow-up PD); lesson plans collected three times (before and after the summer institute and after the follow-up PD); video recordings of the PD sessions; and pre- and post-surveys. Qualitative data were analyzed using the DSMRI code book (Authors, n.d.).
The analysis suggests teachers’ prior experiences and self-perceptions about social identity categories (i.e., race and gender) influenced their learning and reflections on teaching difficult histories. Oral history sessions and pedagogy sessions served as key contexts for teacher learning. Through the oral history sessions, the two self-identified Black female teachers formed beliefs about the institute’s treatment of the history of school desegregation in light of their own family histories. They aligned this learning with pre-existing purposes and goals of teaching difficult histories, and generated new action possibilities for future teaching. The two self-identified White female teachers demonstrated a common action possibility by self-perceiving their “privileged” status and leaving their own social identities “on the shelf” when teaching difficult histories to diverse students. Finally, the institute experience left the self-identified White male unable to resolve his discomfort about talking about race and racism. His action possibilities were limited to the incorporation of oral histories.
This study highlights the importance of research on social studies teacher learning in PD contexts, including the ways in which teachers’ prior experiences are expanded upon or challenged during the PD, and informs teacher educators and policy-makers who are designing PD for pre-service and in-service teachers (Borko, 2004; Brown, 2013).

Authors

• Yonghee Suh, Old Dominion University
  Presenting Author

• Joanna K. Garner, Old Dominion University
  Presenting Author

• Virginia Massaro, Old Dominion University
  Presenting Author

• Brian J. Daugherity, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Presenting Author