Podcasts as Teacher Talk in Historical Thinking

Abstract

One of the challenges associated with preparing teacher-candidates to teach historical thinking involves moving away from narrative practices that inhibit explicit use of historical thinking concepts. One belief is that if teachers are able to demonstrate out loud how historians work with primary sources—and thus model historical reasoning through the use of historical thinking strategies—they can better assist their students to arrive at more complex understandings about the constructed nature of history. Indeed, as van Boxtel and van Drie (2018) have argued, how teacher-candidates make sense of the past is key to how their future students will learn to make sense of the past. In this practice-oriented journal article, I explore the benefits and challenges of using podcasts as a pedagogy for preparing pre-service teachers to model historical thinking—and thus engage in dynamic conversations as teacher talk. Through a semester-long project that culminated in the development of “Unwritten Histories” podcasts, teacher-candidates were encouraged to work in groups to adopt a National History Day framework for historical inquiry. This involved the use of annotated bibliographies, inquiry questions, and storylines. Participants were also required to adopt a vocabulary for historical thinking, thus practising the strategy of modelling historical thinking out loud—as teacher talk. This pedagogy was found to be beneficial in supporting a criterialist stance in historical reasoning. What makes this inquiry unique is that while a great deal of research has been undertaken with regards to explicitly teaching historical reasoning through document-based writing (De La Paz et al., 2010; Monte-Sano, 2011; Nokes et al., 2007; Sendur et al., 2021), very little research has been undertaken with regards to creating dialogic podcasts for this purpose.