Learning to teach history in New Zealand secondary schools: Preservice teachers reflect on their practice

Abstract

Introduction An important component of learning to teach involves integrating the theoretical framework developed in teacher-education courses with practical experience in schools. Institutions offering initial teacher-education programmes acknowledge that this endeavour constitutes a challenge during their work with teachers (Kane, 2005). For teacher educators, making these connections also requires that what prospective teachers are learning incorporates new ideas about knowledge, encompasses understanding of current research on and learning and addresses the needs of a different generation of students in the 21st century. While meeting these objectives, educators must also counter claims that teacher-education programmes are too theoretical, inaccessible and unrelated to the real world of the classroom (see, for example, Cameron, 2004; Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training, 2002; Ministerial Advisory Council on the Quality of Teaching, as cited in Vick, 2006). Situated learning for preservice teachers in New Zealand occurs during practicums over a limited number of weeks. They must then draw on this experience during discussions of pedagogy and curriculum in their teacher-education classes. School-based practice is a constructive professional learning experience when the preservice teachers' course work underpins the practicum, and they have the opportunity not only to implement pedagogy and knowledge of learning, but also to reflect on their practice and receive feedback from associate teachers (teachers in secondary schools with responsibility for mentoring teachers). In other situations, experiences for preservice teachers are less successful. The demands of today's busy school environment can mean that teachers do not receive the degree of support from associate teachers that they need or would like (White, 2006). Further concerns for teacher educators are highlighted in findings of a review of New Zealand research regarding the practicum that suggest student teachers do not necessarily learn to teach in ways that research would define as quality teaching (Cameron & Baker, 2004, p. 69). This is reinforced by the findings of a series of studies located in secondary schools (Haigh & Ward, 2004) in which visions of associate teachers working (with teachers) in social constructivist and collaborative frameworks were only partially realised (p. 145). Case-based is one methodological tool that has been advocated since the late 1980s to help teacher educators bridge the theory-practice divide (Merseth, 1996; L. Shulman, 1992, 2004). Cases that contain attributes of both theory and practice enable preservice teachers to examine complex real-life classroom situations outside the school and to practise thinking like a teacher (Kleinfeld, 1992; J. Shulman, 1992). When situated in professional education courses, the use of cases also has the potential to bring about cognitive change in prospective teachers and thereby help reform pedagogical practices (Sykes & Bird, 1992; Wasserman, 1994). This article reports on a case study examination of case-based in a New Zealand teacher-education course for preservice history teachers. The intent of part of the teacher-education course was to provide these teachers with cases, in which they themselves were participants, that would allow them to (i) examine the pedagogical and subject-related issues arising from secondary school history, (ii) develop their pedagogical content knowledge and (iii) make links between current educational theory and research and their experiences. The article begins by discussing the literature relating to case-based with preservice teachers and to learning in a community of professional colleagues. A description of the study, and an elaboration of the students' group-based examination and critical analysis of each case, follows. …