“I’ve become more critical”: Development of Dutch elementary teachers’ beliefs about history and history teaching in an inquiry-based professional learning program

Abstract

This study aims to explore how elementary school teachers’ beliefs about the nature of history and pedagogical beliefs about teaching history developed over the course of a two-year professional development (PD) program and which elements of the program stimulated this development. This PD program aimed to develop participants’ skills in historical reasoning and in designing inquiry-based history lessons that encourage students to reason historically. Teachers engaged in historical reasoning and developed and implemented activities for inquiry-based learning in their history lessons. In this qualitative study, we interviewed nine teachers before and after the program, and they completed the Beliefs about Learning and Teaching History questionnaire before, during and after the program. Thematic analysis of the data shows that elementary teachers participating in our PD program developed more nuanced beliefs about history. Both epistemic and pedagogical beliefs became more crystallized and more criterialist in nature, but it is especially participants’ pedagogical beliefs that became more oriented toward inquiry into historical sources and the importance of developing historical reasoning skills in students. Our findings also indicate that more naïve ideas remained in addition to more nuanced beliefs. Participants indicated that their pedagogical beliefs about teaching history and conducting historical inquiry changed because of the program. Based on the final interviews, we identified five elements that enhanced participants’ professional development toward teaching inquiry-based history lessons and influenced their epistemic beliefs. It was the combination of engaging in historical inquiry, modeling by the facilitator, participating in group discussions about historical inquiry, searching for historical sources themselves and developing and discussing their own lesson designs and putting them into practice that made participants see the possibilities of inquiry-based history learning and stimulated the development of their beliefs. The findings of this study imply that to prepare elementary teachers to teach history in a way that fosters inquiry into historical sources and historical reasoning, PD programs and teacher education should pay attention to the epistemology of history as a discipline and provide teachers with tools to do inquiry.