Developing Student Teachers’ Historical Thinking: Oral History in Teacher Education

Abstract

The chapter describes an oral history project integrated into a History of Canadian Education course in a preservice teacher education program. The course addressed the overarching critical inquiry question: To what extent has contemporary schooling been shaped by its history? Over the term, the students investigated related questions that explored change and continuity in curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment; children’s experience of schooling; the schooling of ethnic, linguistic, and racial minorities; and the nature of teachers’ work. Integrating an oral history interview into the course offered students unique and powerful opportunities to engage in their own historical inquiries and develop historical thinking skills. The oral history interviews provided the opportunity for the students to confront many challenging elements of oral histories as a source of evidence. By examining change and continuity in teaching, exploring the causes and consequences of educational change, and seeking to understand historical perspectives, the oral history projects empowered the students to question past policies, contemporary values, and easy generalizations about “best practices” in teaching. But there were some significant and enduring issues in Canadian schooling the student teachers were not forced to confront. In some ways the oral history interviews presented the student teachers with an idealized past that allowed them to avoid the moral complexities of considering fundamental changes to the current structures of public schooling.