Beginning teachers' conceptual understandings of effective history teaching: examining the change from “subject knowers” to “subject teachers”

Abstract

This article reports the investigation of change in preservice teachers' conceptions of effective history teaching across a secondary history methods course in a postgraduate diploma of education program. Using concept mapping to plot shifts in their expressed reflections, data were obtained that indicate personal constructs of effective history teaching based around participants' map structures, curriculum understandings, knowledge of subject matter, knowledge of learners, knowledge of pedagogies, and pedagogical content knowledge. The purpose of this article is twofold: to present the findings of research exploring the growth in conceptual understandings of early career history teachers promoted through the use of concept maps, and to discuss the participants' response to tangible opportunities to reflect on their own conceptual understandings of history teaching.