McCormick, Theresa M. and Janie Hubbard. “Every Picture Tells a Story: A Study of Teaching Methods Using Historical Photographs with Elementary Students.” (2011)

In this article, McCormick and Hubbard provide a descriptive portrait of two elementary teacher candidates incorporating historical photographs into the classroom. They sought to answer two questions: (1) what is the rational that elementary teacher candidates have for selecting historical photographs while teaching concepts; and (2) what instructional strategies do these candidates use when guiding students’ analysis of historical photographs? The two teacher candidates involved in the study were Victoria, whose placement was with first-graders, and Erin, who was placed with fourth-graders.

Victoria was required to teach a lesson on discrimination and segregation for Black History Month. She used four photographs of 1950s and 1960s segregated schools, and helped students compare and contrast segregated white and black schools using a Venn diagram in order to help the students construct their own senses of what is fair and equal. She hoped to develop historical empathy, and the lesson was successful. Erin’s lesson focused on the question of what life was like for people in her state during the Great Depression. She also wished to develop historical empathy in her students. She worked to do so by creating packets of photographs of children in the Depression, and had students complete a KWL chart (What I Know, What I Wonder, What I have learned). She then had students read quotations from letters that children had written to Eleanor Roosevelt in the hopes that students would gain a better sense of what it meant to be a child during the Depression. They then used a cause-effect-solution chart to organize the information as a class. Through the use of these case studies, McCormick and Hubbard argue that teacher candidates need multiple opportunities to experience historical enquiry in their methods classes, and that they will often model their lessons on those experiences in their placements.