Keep Calm and Contextualize: One Preservice Teacher’s Use of Historical Contextualization in the Middle School Classroom

Abstract

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of a history teacher’s ability to historically contextualize primary sources. Contextualization gives life to primary sources that many students feel are flat and lifeless. Moreover, due to their limited experience and knowledge, preservice teachers often lack the sophistication to thematically conceive of and act on historical content, inhibiting their ability to historically contextualize primary sources. As such, this study investigated how one preservice teacher historically contextualized primary sources for herself and for her 8th grade U.S. history students and what her pedagogical use of these primary sources revealed about how she historically contextualized such sources. Utilizing a constructivist theoretical framework as a critical lens to examine ways in which she conceptualized her use of primary sources for her students, data was collected via face-to-face interviews, written questionnaires, and video recordings throughout this ten week study. Ultimately, the preservice teacher presented an episodic view of history in which she presented historical content with an emphasis on events, rather than on the connection of such events to broader historical themes and developments. This revealed itself through her continued short-term contextualization of primary sources despite showing knowledge of historical content that matched a long-term contextualization during her interviews. She also presented historical content to students through the lens of simple cause and effect, although during interviews she explained her thinking about historical events within the context of continuity and change.