Historians, Archivists, and Museum Educators as Teacher Educators: Mentoring Preservice History Teachers at Cultural Institutes

Abstract

A relatively new phenomenon in teacher education involves preservice history teachers conducting fieldwork in museums, archives, and other cultural institutes. However, researchers have yet to generate understandings supported by empirical observations of the inner workings of such fieldwork experiences. Using interviews, observations, and artifacts, this article analyzes the pedagogies historians, archivists, and museum educators use when adopting the role of teacher educators. Findings offer possibilities for a collaborative and site-based structure of teacher education, running contrary to traditional models. Important to the development of preservice history teachers, mentors at cultural institutes conceptualize their work through an inquiry lens, growing intuitively out of their work as disciplinary experts. In addition, educative mentoring, while typically conceived of as a classroom-based method, was observed in practice at cultural institutes. This article concludes by offering suggestions for applying principles from this model to existing preservice teacher education programs.