There's a new approach to teaching history trending in North America and other areas of the world that encourages student teachers to think historically, rather than through traditional rote learning. In this pedagogical approach to learning history, students are introduced to the procedures historians engage in, including evaluating significance, assessing cause and consequence, exploring the varied perspectives of people in the past and probing the ethical dimensions of history. While this approach has many supporters, is it actually being implemented in classrooms?

The essays that comprise this volume evolved from conversations among Canadian history teacher educators that focused on how to effectively prepare teachers to nurture historical thinking in their classrooms. The symposium held by The History Education Network/Histoire et éducation en réseau (THEN/HiER) in 2011 resulted in research projects, reflections and descriptions of exemplary teaching activities that reflected the diverse and creative initiatives from scholars across Canada. The main product of the symposium is this book, which suggests that ongoing teacher professional development has a role to play in supporting not only beginning teachers' entry into the teaching profession, but also experienced teachers who seek opportunities for professional growth throughout their teaching careers.

The first section of the book explores appropriate learning environments before formal teacher education programs.

In Chapter Two, "Moving from the Periphery to the Core: The Possibilities for Professional Learning Communities in History Teacher Education," Alan Sears notes how many pre-service teachers do not have experience doing history, which impacts how they are able to teach their students. He establishes three principles for creating professional learning communities: Identity Formation Is Central to Teacher Education, Taking the Long View of Teacher Education, and Communities of Practice Provide a Substantial Context for Teacher Education.

In Chapter Three, "'The Teacher Is the Keystone of the Educational Arch': A Century and a Half of Lifelong Teacher Education in Canada," Penney Clark provides the historical context and outlines the development of formalized teacher preparation education in Canada from the early nineteenth century to the present. Clark also describes the implications of the shift from teachers receiving their education and training in normal schools to universities, as well as the changing requirements for elementary and secondary school teachers.

Advancing from Clark’s chapter, Scott A. Pollock discusses recent research in history and social studies teacher education and its effect on practice in Canada in Chapter Four, "The Poverty and Possibility of Historical Thinking: An Overview of Recent Research into History Teacher Education."

The second section of the book explores various elements of history teacher education programs.

In Chapter Five, "On Historians and Their Audiences: An Argument for Teaching (and Not Just Writing) History," Ruth W. Sandwell argues that the work of historians-as-undergraduate-teachers is just as important, or even more important, than the published versions of their original contributions to research.

In Chapter Six, "Canadian History for Teachers: Integrating Content and Pedagogy in Teacher Education," Amy von Heyking describes her study that created a course on the major events in Canadian history since Confederation that helped bridge the content and pedagogy divide for history teachers.

The third section of the book explores history and social studies teacher education programs in Canada.

In Chapter Seven, "What Is the Use of the Past for Future Teachers? A Snapshot of Francophone Student Teachers in Ontario and Quebec Universities," Stéphane Lévesque discusses his study that explores the ideas that some francophone student teachers had about history and education as they were completing their teacher education degrees in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec during the 2009-2010 academic year to investigate various aspects of historical consciousness, understanding and use of sources, significance of the past, and conception of history education.

In Chapter Eight, "Through the Looking Glass: An Overview of the Theoretical Foundations of Quebec’s History Curriculum," Catherine Duquette establishes the theoretical foundations of historical thinking as understood by the Quebec curriculum, and highlights how this model might influence the university instruction that student teachers receive.

In Chapter Nine, "Troubling Compromises: Historical Thinking in a One-Year Secondary Teacher Education Program," Peter Seixas, an education professor, and Graeme Webber, a student teacher, combine their individual narratives to consider what kinds of reforms within teacher education can lead to better outcomes.

In Chapter Ten, "Engaging Teacher Education through Re-writing That History We Have Already Learned," Kent den Heyer focuses on two distinguishable ways to think about historical perspective, as well as the dominant forms of knowledge and knowing and how that concern illustrates the inadequacy of exploring teacher identity as a professional affiliation.

In Chapter Eleven, "'Walking the Talk': Modelling the Pedagogy We Preach in History and Social Studies Methodology Courses." Roland Case and Genie MacLeod acknowledge that commonly used pedagogy in history and social studies methodology courses is often inconsistent with the theory and practice it purports to teach. They explain how it is possible to teach methodology courses in a manner that models the pedagogy espoused in the courses, and "walking the talk" is necessary and likely to successfully prepare students to teach in more effective ways.

In Chapter Twelve, "Teaching Student Teachers to Use Primary Sources When Teaching History," Lindsay Gibson describes the "boundary project" he assigned to a cohort of student teachers in a social studies methods class in 2010 where students were asked to create sets of primary and secondary sources focused on an important historical topic in the British Columbia curriculum. His chapter discusses the benefits and limitations of using this assignment with student teachers in order to assess how well it improved their ability to effectively use primary sources in their teaching.

In Chapter Thirteen, "Learning to Learn in New Brunswick Teacher Preparation: Historical Research as a Vehicle for Cultivating Historical Thinking in the Context of Social Studies Education," Theodore Christou discusses an experiment in history teacher education at the University of New Brunswick that was based on the supposition that a robust understanding of the relationship between historical thinking and the teaching and learning of history demands a dialogue. His study highlights the disconnect student teachers felt between the way they had learned history and the way they intended to teach it.

In Chapter Fourteen, "When in Doubt, Ask: Student Teacher Insights into Research and Practice," John JC Meyers presents an effective strategy that instructors can use in their classrooms to "induce" prospective history teachers into wider communities of practice, and also into the realization that research can assist them in understanding why and how change is necessary within history education.

In the fourth and final section of the book, a number of authors posit the important role of "boundary work" for history teachers after they have completed their professional training and formal education, wherein history and social studies teachers can find sustained (and sustaining) communities of practice both inside and outside the school system to support their ongoing work.

In Chapter Fifteen, "Can Teacher Education Programs Learn Something from Teacher Professional Development Initiatives?," Carla L. Peck reviews research on professional development in history education and presents findings from longitudinal research that investigated the effects of a two-year professional development project on teaching historical thinking with K-12 teachers in Alberta in order to provide suggestions regarding what teacher education programs can learn from professional development initiatives.

In Chapter Sixteen, "On the Museum as a Practised Place: Or, Reconsidering Museums and History Education," Brenda Trofanenko discusses the changing role of museums in advancing historical understanding, which means educators must reconsider what role they play in their interactions with museum personnel. Trofanenko also raises questions about how teacher education might be supported through public history museums that enhance history teachers' and their students' historical understanding.

In Chapter Seventeen, "Teaching History Teachers in the Classroom," Jan Haskings-Winner looks at two professional development approaches in Ontario that employ different professional learning models to introduce teachers to how they can develop the practice of historical thinking that bridges research and teaching.

In Chapter Eighteen, "Engendering Power and Legitimation: Giving Teachers the Tools to Claim a Place for History Education in Their Schools," Rose Fine-Meyer discusses her Grade 12 Ontario curriculum course that focused on active research into local history, which facilitated important connections between pedagogical practices that nurtured historical thinking in the classroom and the communities of practice where teachers and students could expand their historical understanding outside the classroom.

In Chapter Nineteen, "Telling the Stories of the Nikkei: A Place-Based History Education Project," Terry Taylor and Linda Farr Darling ask, "How can teachers in a small rural school cultivate students' historical understandings through a project based on local events?" Over two terms, secondary students in the West Kootenays of British Columbia immersed themselves in "place-based education," a multidisciplinary, community-focused exploration of the local internment of 1,400 Canadians of Japanese descent from 1942 to 1946.