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Citation: 

Sandwell, Ruth. “History is a Verb: Teaching Historical Practice to Teacher Education Students.” In New Possibilities for the Past: Shaping History Education in Canada, edited by Penney Clark, 224-42. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011.

Abstract/Summary: 

In this chapter Sandwell discusses her attempt to bring historical thinking to bear on teacher education students in the teacher education program at the University of Toronto, which in turn will hopefully affect the secondary students the teacher candidates will eventually teach. Instead of trying to effect change from a top-down approach, such as changing curriculum, Sandwell champions a grass-roots movement such as her teacher education elective history course. In this course students were first taught what primary documents are and then were taught the myriad of ways they can be used in the teaching of history. Students’ main objective of the course was to create a lesson plan that used the tenets of historical and critical thinking. The students were also to read academic articles related to historical thinking and to form discussions in class. Sandwell’s objective was to teach a course in which teacher education students would learn how to teach history in a way that closely resembles what historians do and what history is.

Source/Credit: 
Erika Smith