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  • Becoming a History Teacher: Sustaining Practices in Historical Thinking and Knowing ed. by Ruth Sandwell, Amy von Heyking
  • Adam Chapnick
Becoming a History Teacher: Sustaining Practices in Historical Thinking and Knowing. Ruth Sandwell and Amy von Heyking, eds. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. Pp. xii +345, $85.00 cloth, $35.95 paper, $35.95 ebook

Becoming a History Teacher is an excellent book, even if it will make academics who specialize in Canadian history uncomfortable. Two professors from faculties of education, Ruth Sandwell at the University of Toronto and Amy von Heyking at the University of Lethbridge, have not only transformed the results of an April 2011 Symposium sponsored by the History Education Network / Histoire et éducation en réseau into a sound collection of thematically linked essays, but they have also made a compelling argument – both implicitly and explicitly – about the general failure of history departments in Canada to teach their undergraduates how to think historically.

The premise of the book is straightforward. Over the last decade, a “revolution in history education” has propelled “historical thinking and knowing to the forefront of history and social studies education in North America and beyond” (3). Faculties of education that prepare history teachers for the primary and secondary classrooms have embraced research indicating that learning history means more than simply memorizing names, places, and dates. Teacher education programs now ask candidates to think historically: to evaluate significance, [End Page 325] assess cause and consequence, and to explore different perspectives on the past.

Regrettably, however, as Alan Sears makes clear in his chapter, too many pre-service teachers, including history majors, “have little or no first-hand experience with the processes of doing history” (12). Their experience not just in secondary school but also as undergraduates has created what scientists call a “strong cognitive frame” that defines teaching history as little more than the process of passing along facts and figures about the past from instructor to student. Moreover, one or two courses in teaching history (or perhaps just in social studies) at a teacher’s college is not nearly enough to alter cognitive frames that have been so deeply established. Indeed, as Peter Seixas and Graeme Webber conclude dispiritedly, if teacher-education candidates arrive in methodology classes without having already acquired proficiency in historical thinking, they are unlikely to graduate with the skills necessary to teach in a manner that will meet the needs of the next generation. Even worse, suggests Lindsay Gibson, having managed to achieve admission to teacher’s college without exerting the effort necessary to think historically, “the majority of history teachers may simply not be ready or willing to take on the combination of intellectual rigour and good pedagogical practice needed to move a history teacher from the periphery to the core of their profession” (222). As a result, conclude a number of the book’s contributors, “post-degree education for teachers (what is commonly called professional development) must be completely rethought” (21).

However, the solution does not rest exclusively, or even primarily, in faculties of education. In a chapter that should be required reading for every Canadian history professor, Ruth Sandwell argues that it is also time for academic historians to reconceptualize their professional roles. Certainly, they have an obligation to produce first-rate original research, but their most significant impact – particularly from a societal point of view – is likely to take place in the classroom, where they have the opportunity to move “disciplined historical understanding into the public realm.” Teaching historical thinking more effectively, she maintains, “brings important advantages to citizens trying to make some sense of the complex, varied, and dynamic world in which we live, giving them the kind of understanding they need in order to effectively exercise their democratic voice” (81).

Admittedly, Becoming a History Teacher lacks a degree of balance. Scott Pollock concedes that some university educators have already made efforts to change the way that they teach, and Penney Clark notes that teachers’ colleges themselves would benefit by setting [End Page 326] higher standards for historical understanding in their admissions processes. Perhaps most important, representatives of university history departments do not have their own voice in the collection...

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