01.Professional Learning and Development
Paper
Teachers’ Action Research as a Case of Social Learning: Exploring Learning in between Research and School Practice
Peter Johannesson, Anette Olin
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Presenting Author: Johannesson, Peter;
Olin, Anette
Although action research has a history of bridging gaps between research and school practice, challenges emerge when aligning a scientific approach with development work in schools and in collaboration between research and school practice. Previous research has problematised aspects such as power relations, epistemologies and changes that might occur in partnerships where teachers collaborate with different partners. However, there is a need to better understand how the process of learning emerges and is affected by the different partners involved in the collaboration. The Swedish Education Act states that all education in Sweden should rest on science and proven experience and this has led to increased demands on schools to undertake research-based activities and apply scientific methods to their development work. However, research show that teachers and principals find it difficult to interpret the policy and struggle to enact it. To facilitate this work, collaboration with and support from researchers and critical friends have been suggested, which in turn pose difficulties in overarching power relations and differences in epistemologies and in what counts as valuable knowledge (cf. Aspfors et al., 2015; Bevins & Price, 2014; Bruce et al., 2011; Olin et al., 2021; Somekh, 1994).
In this study, we follow two teachers conducting action research in an upper secondary school in Sweden, in collaboration with other teachers and a professional development (PD) leader. In this context, teacher learning in situ as teachers develop their classroom practices through action research is explored. Theoretically, a framework about value creation (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020; Wenger-Trayner et al., 2017) is used to describe and understand teachers’ action research as social learning. With this framework, the values enacted and expressed by the participants come into focus and allow us to create narratives about the learning trajectories that occur in practice. Additionally, Wenger’s concepts of boundary objects and brokering help explain how different participants engaged in the collaboration contribute to the learning trajectories. Our aim is to deepen the knowledge on teachers’ action research as social learning in collaboration with a research-based PD leader. Our research questions are: (1) What are the critical aspects of teachers’ action research as a social learning process undertaken together with a PD leader?, and (2) How do boundary objects and brokering contribute to that process?
The primary focus of the theory of Communities of Practice (CoP) is on learning as social participation, and participation refers in his case, to being active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relations to these communities. A CoP can be described and analysed by three dimensions: shared repertoire, mutual engagement and joint domain. The social dimension – mutual engagement – has been further elaborated and “theorized as value creation in social learning spaces” (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p. 6). The notion of ”social learning spaces” allows us to study social learning processes where knowledge and competence from multiple CoPs can be found within a specific social structure in a CoP. To understand social learning systems, Wenger proposes three structuring elements, defined as 1) CoPs, 2) identities shaped by participation in CoPs and 3) boundary processes between communities. Boundaries between CoPs can be used to identify differences in ways of working in CoPs and to serve as bridges between them. Boundary objects are characterised by their ability to enable communication and coordination, as well as align activities between practices, not necessarily forcing consensus. Since competence and knowing within this framework are defined by the members of a community, the process of crossing boundaries can be problematic, why we explore brokering taking place that leads to increased possibilities for learning.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe research design of this study can be described as a case study involving an upper secondary school in Sweden with an approach to school development through action research. Founded in 2014 as an independent school, from the start, it created an organisation to support professional development, including the appointment of a PD leader. The teachers in this school attend weekly meetings (the so-called learning groups) where they, supported by the PD leader, work together using an action research approach – best described as classroom action research (Kemmis et al., 2014) – to improve teaching practices. The study is viewed as both first- and second-order action research (cf. Feldman, 2020) because it contains examples of teachers’ and the PD leader’s collaboration in teachers’ action research (first order) and at the same time, it is the study of their collaboration and doing of action research (second order). Thus, the study contributes with knowledge about the conditions that either facilitate or obstruct learning in this context
To explore action research as a case of social learning, the data have been selected through the abductive approach of combining theoretical concepts with the first author’s knowledge as a researcher from the inside (cf. Kaukko et al., 2020). The evidence has been selected from a larger dataset, generated throughout the academic year 2017/2018, to be able to write value-creation stories (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger Trayner, 2020; Wenger-Trayner et al., 2017). The value-creation framework is a theoretical elaboration on the concept of mutual engagement and is also suggested (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger Trayner, 2020) as a method of evaluating social learning. In our analysis, the value-creation framework was adapted and integrated with the action research process to describe the latter as a case of social learning and to identify critical aspects of the collaboration throughout the process The stories and the analysis are based on data from the PD leader/researcher log, transcribed extracts from audio recordings from the learning groups, video recordings of the two teachers’ presentations of their action research and empirical evidence generated by the teachers and combining these data enabled the writing of the value-creation stories.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsWe highlight three critical aspects in the social learning process; (1) the negotiations on competing sets of norms and values: school’s local development area, the action research approach and the teachers’ individual values in relation to classroom practice, (2) adaptations of scientific methods, and, (3) the range of research questions that require a broad knowledgeability of (and access to) a variety of analytical tools and theoretical perspectives to be used in the empirical work. Further, the findings illustrate how boundary objects supported the connection between research and school practice and illustrate in particular how the collaboration in the learning group functioned as a boundary process where two sets of practices (classroom and academic) coordinate and contribute to the study participants’ social learning within the PD practice, bridging gaps between research and school practice.
We argue that for action research implemented as a method for PD to be sustainable, participants should be given recurrent opportunities to define values themselves and develop their agency. From the social learning perspective, supporting and facilitating teachers’ action research imply a focus on agency and the emancipatory dimensions of action research. In conclusion, viewing action research as a case of social learning entails creating personal experiences in social interplay and through participation in CoPs. Consequently, for schools that struggle to enact the policy of working on a scientific foundation, one way to ease the struggle is to consider PD through action research, not as a group of teacher researchers making generalisable knowledge claims, but as a group of learning partners creating values that make a difference to themselves and their students. This point of view is also beneficial in terms of avoiding a focus on solutions and ‘what works for whom’, an issue of power that if left unresolved, decreases teachers’ opportunities to develop their agency.
ReferencesAspfors, J., Pörn, M., Forsman, L., Salo, P., & Karlberg-Granlund, G. (2015). The researcher as a negotiator – exploring collaborative professional development projects with teachers. Education Inquiry, 6(4), Article 27045. https://doi.org/10.3402/edui.v6.27045
Bevins, S., & Price, G. (2014). Collaboration between academics and teachers: A complex relationship. Educational Action Research, 22(2), 270–284. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2013.869181
Bruce, C. D., Flynn, T., & Stagg-Peterson, S. (2011). Examining what we mean by collaboration in collaborative action research: A cross-case analysis. Educational Action Research, 19(4), 433–452. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2011.625667
Kaukko, M., Wilkinson, J., & Langelotz, L. (2020). Research that facilitates praxis and praxis development. In K. Mahon, C. Edwards-Groves, S. Francisco, M. Kaukko, S. Kemmis, & K. Petrie (Eds.), Pedagogy, education, and praxis in critical times (pp. 39–63). Springer.
https://doi-org.ezproxy.ub.gu.se/10.1007/978-981-15-6926-5_3
Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., & Nixon, R. (2014). The action research planner (2014 ed.). Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-67-2
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press.
Wenger, E. (2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization, 7(2), 225–246. https://doi.org/10.1177/135050840072002
Wenger-Trayner, E., Fenton-O’Creevy, M., Hutchinson, S., Kubiak, C., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Learning in landscapes of practice: Boundaries, identity, and knowledgeability in practice-based learning. Routledge.
Wenger-Trayner, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2020). Learning to make a difference: Value creation in social learning spaces. Cambridge University Press.
Wenger-Trayner, B., Wenger-Trayner, E., Cameron, J., Eryigit-Madzwamuse, S., & Hart, A. (2017). Boundaries and boundary objects: An evaluation framework for mixed methods research. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 13(3), 321–338. https://doi.org/10.1177/1558689817732225
Olin, A., Almqvist, J., & Hamza, K. (2021). To recognize oneself and others in teacher-researcher collaboration. Educational Action Research, Ahead-of-print (Ahead-of-print), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2021.1897949
Somekh, B. (1994). Inhabiting each other’s castles: Towards knowledge and mutual growth through collaboration. Educational Action Research, 2(3), 357–381. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965079940020305
01.Professional Learning and Development
Paper
Engaging Teacher Students in Productive Collaboration during Practicum
Kristin Børte, Sølvi Lillejord
University of Bergen, Norway
Presenting Author: Børte, Kristin;
Lillejord, Sølvi
This paper reports from a study where a new digital learning design tool (the ILUKS planner) was tested. The ILUKS-project, financed by the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills, aims to support teacher students’ active learning and productive collaboration during their practicum. The ILUKS planner allows students to plan lessons in a flexible and dynamic way, by constructing and co-constructing knowledge (van Schaik et al., 2019), share designs and receive feedback on their learning designs from school mentors, university supervisors or peers.
ILUKS is designed as a boundary object (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011), where students can work inquiry based, create digital learning designs, and receive feedback on these designs before and after their classroom teaching. We present data from student evaluations and interviews and describe how the tool supports teacher students’ active learning and professional development.
Across Europe, there are different training models for aspiring teachers, such as work placement and training schools and the quality of collaboration between key actor varies (Maandag et al., 2007). Several collaborative models exist, such as clinical partnerships (Potter et al., 2020), Professional Development Schools (Darling-Hammond, Cobb, & Bullmaster, 2021), Research-Practice-Partnerships (RPP) (Coburn, Penuel, & Farrell, 2021), and Professional Learning Networks (Poortman, Brown, & Schildkamp, 2022).
Partnership models in teacher education emerged in the mid-1980s with the intention to strengthen both schools and teacher education institutions. However, a research mapping revealed that partners often struggle, partly due to asymmetric relations (Lillejord & Børte, 2016). Some problems are related to the historic dominance of teacher education institutions, schools do not feel included on equal terms. Studies report disagreements between supervisor and mentor – with the student as an unwilling observer to debates. Characteristics of successful partnerships is that partners have a mutual knowledge interest, shared engagement and/or a joint project that is beneficial for both parties. Ideally, partnerships should aim at counteracting asymmetric relations and identify a shared object of collaboration.
In this paper, we use the ILUKS planner as a joint object for knowledge development. In the design process, teacher students learn how to plan their teaching. ILUKS serves as a model for professional learning dialogue where both school mentors and university supervisors must relate to knowledge from practice (experience) and knowledge from research, as is typically the case in the education of professions (Lillejord & Børte, 2020). This more democratic approach (Zeichner, Payne, & Brayko, 2015) will make teacher education programs more productive, as teacher students learn to produce knowledge with relevance for the teaching profession and expand the profession’s knowledge base.
Digital technology has the potential to facilitate collaboration in partnerships. Online tools, such as wikis allow for dialogue about professional practice (Lewis, 2012) and online backchannel platforms allow for discussion of issues observed during classroom practice (Howell et al., 2017). Research on computer-supported collaborative learning has focused on supporting students as collaborative learners and emphasized the importance of dialogical interactions among learners (Stahl et al., 2014). However, for student dialogues to be productive, the depth and quality of peer interactions, conflict resolution, mutual regulation and explicit argumentation is important (Asterhan & Schwarz, 2016). Therefore, how digital environments are designed to support inquiry, collaborative learning and productive collaborative knowledge building is important (Yang et al., 2022). The present study reports from the first test period of the ILUKS planner where the tool was used as a collaborative digital platform and a joint object for knowledge development for teacher students who learn how to teach. The following research question was formulated:
How can technology support productive collaboration between teacher students, university supervisors and school mentors during student’s practicum?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis paper reports from the research and development project ILUKS – Innovative teacher students: Learning designs for student active teaching. The project’s main goals are to contribute to more student active learning in teacher education programs, and improved practicum period for teacher students. To accomplish this, ILUKS was developed to support collaboration between teacher students, university supervisors and school mentors. The learning design tool – the ILUKS Planner – allows users to create learning designs in a collaborative, flexible and dynamic manner, by sharing their learning designs, give and receive feedback on the design to improve it.
The learning design tool was tested in a teacher education program at the University of Bergen, Norway in collaboration with four schools in Bergen Municipality, fall 2022 and were subject to research. Participation was voluntary and in the first trial eight teacher students and five schoolteachers from four different schools participated. The use of the ILUKS planner was integrated in the course “Teaching design for student active learning” where university supervisors used the tool to facilitate teacher students’ active learning processes when learning how to plan a lesson. The teacher students used the ILUKS planner to create learning designs for lessons they were going to teach during practicum and shared the design with their school mentor. The school mentor commented on the designs in advance, so the students could improve their design before teaching in class. The ILUKS Planner provides possibilities to enhance students’ learning through productive collaboration, knowledge production, and inquiry about teaching practices.
Data collection and analysis
Data was gathered throughout the trial and includes students’ and schoolteachers’ evaluations, user experiences of the ILUKS planner and interviews with teacher students. A web-based open-ended questionnaire was used to collect teacher students’ experiences and evaluation of the seminars and a standard usability scale (Brooke, 1996) was used to measure students’ user experience with the ILUKS planner (N=8). The schoolteachers answered a web-based questionnaire at the end of the students’ practicum (N=3). In addition, the eight teacher students were interviewed about their experiences using the ILUKS planner as a digital platform to facilitate contact with their mentors during practicum.
The data analyzed for this paper are answers from the web-based questionnaires and qualitative interviews with the teacher students. A qualitative thematic analysis was conducted to identify the underpinning principles of teacher students productive collaborative learning processes.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsPreliminary findings show that the ILUKS planner supported students’ productive collaboration for creating and co-creating knowledge and served as a shared knowledge object for inquiry and collaboration during practicum. The shared learning design facilitated productive learning dialogues, and students acted as knowledge producers. This gave students and school mentors a joint point of departure for deliberations and feedback.
For students, feedback on their learning design prior to teaching was important as this allowed them to improve designs before entering the classroom. One student said, “feedback made me reflect more on how the class wanted it rather than how I wanted my lesson to be”. Another student said, “I am now more aware of my pedagogical and didactic approach, what I need to practice more, a reality check on the practical pitfalls of teaching.”
For teachers, the learning designs was a valuable basis for mentoring and feedback. It provided insight into how students reflected on teaching and planned a lesson. Also, students appeared better prepared and ready to discuss issues related to their learning design and teaching. One teacher said “ILUKS forces students to plan their teaching in an orderly and comprehensive manner. Awareness of various issues that must be considered when planning teaching is an advantage in the reflective dialogue we have with the students after their teaching. ILUKS makes communication easier as it provides opportunity for direct input and comments on learning designs before the teaching. If all students use ILUKS, it will lead to a more equal opportunity for feedback/communication.”
University supervisors shared theoretical perspectives and didactical models with the students, school mentors provided valuable experience-based knowledge for how to plan for teaching. The ILUKS planner provided a digital support structure for professional collaboration between teacher students, school mentors and university supervisors, teaching teacher students how to teach.
ReferencesAkkerman, S. F., & Bakker, A. (2011). Boundary crossing and boundary objects. Review of educational research, 81(2), 132-169.
Asterhan, C. S., & Schwarz, B. B. (2016). Argumentation for learning: Well-trodden paths and unexplored territories. Educational Psychologist, 51(2), 164-187. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2016.1155458
Brooke, J. (1996). SUS-A quick and dirty usability scale. Usability evaluation in industry, 189(194), 4-7.
Coburn, C. E., Penuel, W. R., & Farrell, C. C. (2021). Fostering educational improvement with research-practice partnerships. Phi Delta Kappan, 102(7), 14-19.
Darling-Hammond, L., Cobb, V., & Bullmaster, M. (2021). Professional Development Schools as Contexts for Teacher Learning and Leadership 1. In Organizational learning in schools (pp. 149-175): Taylor & Francis.
Howell, P. B., Sheffield, C. C., Shelton, A. L., & Vujaklija, A. R. (2017). Backchannel discussions during classroom observations: Connecting theory and practice in real time. Middle School Journal, 48(2), 24-30.
Lewis, E. (2012). Locating the third space in initial teacher training. Research in Teacher Education, 2(2), 31-36.
Lillejord, S., & Børte, K. (2016). Partnership in teacher education–a research mapping. European Journal of Teacher Education, 39(5), 550-563.
Lillejord, S., & Børte, K. (2020). Trapped between accountability and professional learning? School leaders and teacher evaluation. Professional development in education, 46(2), 274-291.
Maandag, D. W., Deinum, J. F., Hofman, A. W., & Buitink, J. (2007). Teacher education in schools: An international comparison. European Journal of Teacher Education, 30(2), 151-173.
Poortman, C. L., Brown, C., & Schildkamp, K. (2022). Professional learning networks: a conceptual model and research opportunities. Educational research, 64(1), 95-112.
Potter, K. M., Fahrenbruck, M. L., Hernandez, C. M., Araujo, B., Valenzuela, T. C., & Lucero, L. (2020). Strengthening collaborative relationships in teacher education. International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices, 10(1), 1-15.
Stahl, G., Cress, U., Ludvigsen, S., & Law, N. (2014). Dialogic foundations of CSCL. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 9(2), 117-125. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-014-9194-7
van Schaik, P., Volman, M., Admiraal, W., & Schenke, W. (2019). Approaches to co-construction of knowledge in teacher learning groups. Teaching and teacher education, 84, 30-43.
Yang, Y., Zhu, G., Sun, D., & Chan, C. K. (2022). Collaborative analytics-supported reflective Assessment for Scaffolding Pre-service Teachers’ collaborative Inquiry and Knowledge Building. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 1-44. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-022-09372-y
Zeichner, K., Payne, K. A., & Brayko, K. (2015). Democratizing teacher education. Journal of teacher education, 66(2), 122-135.
01.Professional Learning and Development
Paper
Development of Elementary Teachers’ Beliefs about History and History Education in a PD Programme.
Yolande Potjer2,3, Marjolein Dobber1, Carla van Boxtel2
1Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands, The; 2university of Amsterdam; 3Iselinge Hogeschool
Presenting Author: Dobber, Marjolein
For elementary teachers, history is only one of many subjects they teach. Beliefs teachers hold about the nature of history and the construction of historical knowledge significantly influence what they perceive as relevant content and how they teach the subject (Stoel et al., 2022). Elementary teachers’ beliefs, mental conceptualisations and constructs of history are usually formed by how history is presented in movies, books, museums and the textbooks they read as a student (Gibson & Peck, 2020). In general, elementary teachers have not engaged in historical inquiry themselves. This is problematic, because history education researchers have emphasized the importance of historical reasoning activities in teaching history (e.g., Levstik & Thornton, 2018). Teachers can only teach students a disciplinary way of working with history if they themselves master these disciplinary skills to a certain extent.
In the Netherlands, historical reasoning is not commonly part of the history curriculum for elementary schools. Teachers teach a ten-era framework illustrated with events and persons from the Dutch Canon (Kennedy, 2020). In schools that experiment with inquiry-based learning in history, a common practice is that students are encouraged to gather information on the internet and present this, but due to no or limited modelling, real historical inquiry and historical reasoning are lacking and students’ understanding of historical events remains limited (Béneker et al., 2021). This can reinforce the naïve belief, both in teacher and students, that history is a single story, based on a series of facts (Van Boxtel et al., 2021).
Helping teachers develop beliefs about history and teaching history that foster inquiry into historical sources and historical reasoning can take place through a professional development (PD) programme in which teachers are informed about and experiment with historical inquiry and reasoning. In their Interconnected model of teacher professional growth, Clarke and Hollingsworth (2002) suggest that change in knowledge, beliefs and attitude triggers change in teachers’ practice when they engage in professional experimentation. A reversed influence is also possible: that teacher beliefs change by experimenting with new approaches and reflecting on the effects on student learning and learning outcomes.
In previous research on teacher beliefs about history, attention has been paid to how epistemic beliefs of teachers in middle and secondary schools influence their choices in teaching history (Voet & de Wever, 2016) and how pre-service teachers’ beliefs about history develop (Gibson & Peck, 2020; Wansink et al., 2017). Maggioni et al. (2004) describe developments in elementary teachers’ epistemic beliefs in the course of a PD programme on content and method of teaching American history. In their study, the shifts in epistemic beliefs after the programme were limited and suggested relative stability in teacher beliefs.
To prepare teachers in grade 3-6 (students 8 to 12 years old) to engage students in historical inquiry and reasoning, we developed a two-year PD programme. The programme aims to develop participants’ own historical thinking and reasoning skills and their skills in designing inquiry-based history lessons that encourage students to reason historically. We aim to contribute to knowledge on how participation in a PD programme influences teachers’ beliefs about history and inquiry-based history teaching, and to the discussion of effective elements of teacher PD that enhance development in subject-specific beliefs.
We address two research questions.
1. How does a PD programme, in which elementary school teachers learn to reason historically and develop skills to design inquiry-based historical reasoning lessons, influence participants’ epistemic beliefs about history and pedagogical beliefs about history teaching?
2. Which elements of the PD programme do participants consider as sources of growth for their professional development?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe study included nine teachers from six elementary schools in the Netherlands, who enrolled in a two-year PD programme on historical reasoning in inquiry-based history lessons. The ethics committee of the university of Amsterdam approved the data collection. All participants hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Education. In addition, one teacher holds a Master’s Degree in History. Participants teach in grade 3 to 6 and their mean years of experience is 11 years. The teachers chose to participate voluntarily.
The programme consisted of fourteen 2,5-hour meetings spread over two school years. The first author was the facilitator and actively participated in the meetings. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic during the first year, meetings three to six were online. Table 2 summarizes the content of the meetings. During each meeting, theoretical background about historical reasoning and inquiry was offered. Topics were chosen by the facilitator or requested by participants. In every meeting participants received historical source material and engaged in historical inquiry. This inquiry involved collaboratively corroborating sources, comparing sources and coming to a substantiated conclusion about the question at hand. In some cases, participants were encouraged to search for additional historical sources themselves.
To identify development in participants’ beliefs about history and history education we collected data using two instruments, which enables methodological diversity and will be discussed in the presentation: individual in-depth interviews and the Beliefs about Learning and Teaching of History (BLTH-) questionnaire (Maggioni et al., 2004, Dutch version adapted by Havekes, 2015).
The semi-structured interview contained questions about teachers’ beliefs of general goals of history education, the nature of history, knowing versus doing history, inquiry-based learning activities and their sense of agency. These questions were based on previous research on epistemic beliefs about history (Voet & de Wever, 2016).
We used a Dutch translation of the BLTH-questionnaire (Maggioni et al., 2004) that consists of 22 questions (Havekes, 2015). Participants filled in the questionnaire individually immediately after the premeasurement interview and at the end of the final meeting of each year (seventh and fourteenth meeting).
All interviews were fully transcribed. The transcriptions were coded using a coding scheme based on our theoretical framework, supplemented with themes that were derived from the answers in the pre-interviews. The transcriptions were coded using a coding scheme based on our theoretical framework, supplemented with themes that were derived from the answers in the pre-interviews.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsEven though more naïve beliefs about history remain, teachers developed more nuanced beliefs. Pedagogical beliefs of all participants became more crystallized and more nuanced in nature. Epistemic beliefs about history, on the other hand, remained less crystallized or developed in a different direction. This is anticipated, as elementary teachers generally do not think about the nature of history, but do think about how best to teach history.
The development that teachers in our programme show, matches the description by Wansink et al. (2017) how individuals can simultaneously hold opposite beliefs and switch between stances, especially when beliefs about teaching history are discussed as opposed to beliefs about the nature of history.
We describe two development profiles. Teachers that fit the first profile come to understand how difficult history is, epistemically. They develop richer and more nuanced ideas in the course of the PD programme, but risk development of misconceptions about historical narratives all being equally valid. Considering their pedagogical beliefs, teachers in this group developed towards more explicit ideas about doing inquiry in history lessons. Teachers that fit the second profile tended to develop richer beliefs about the nature of history and explicit ideas about inquiry by students in history lessons.
Participants indicated that their pedagogical beliefs about teaching history and performing historical inquiries changed because of the programme. It was the combination of engaging in historical inquiry, modelling by the facilitator, group discussions about historical inquiry, searching for historical sources themselves and developing and discussing their own lesson designs and putting them to practice that made participants see the possibilities of inquiry-based history learning and also helped develop their beliefs. This is in line with earlier findings about professional development for inquiry learning in history (Williamson McDiarmid, 1994, in Van Boxtel et al., 2021; Voet & De Wever, 2018).
ReferencesBéneker, T., Van Boxtel, C., De Leur, T., Smits, A., Blankman, M., & De Groot-Reuvenkamp, M. (2020). Geografisch en historisch besef ontwikkelen op de basisschool. https://hdl.handle.net/11245.1/39bbcabc-b3b3-4415-b0d3-747b97e51984
Clarke, D., Hollingsworth, H. (2002). Elaborating a model of teacher professional growth. Teaching and teacher education, 18(2002), 947-967. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0742-051X(02)00053-7
Gibson, L., & Peck, C. (2020). More than a Methods Course: Teaching Preservice Teachers to Think Historically. In Ch. Berg & Th. Christou (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of History and Social Studies Education (Vol. 1, pp. 213-251). Palgrave MacMillan.
Havekes, H. (2015). Knowing and doing history. Learning historical thinking in the classroom [Doctoral dissertation]. Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen.
Kennedy, J. (2020). Open vensters voor onze tijd. De canon van Nederland herijkt. Rapport van de Commissie Herijking Canon van Nederland. Amsterdam University Press.
Levstik, L., & Thornton, S. (2018). Reconceptualizing history for early childhood through early adolescence. In S. A. Metzger & L. McArthur Harris (Eds.), The Wiley International Handbook on History Teaching and Learning (Vol. 1, pp. 409-432). Wiley Blackwell.
Maggioni, L., Alexander, P., & VanSledright, B. (2004). At the crossroads? The development of epistemological beliefs and historical thinking. European Journal of School Psychology 2, no. 1-2, 169-197.
Stoel, G., Logtenberg, A., Wansink, B., Huijgen, T., Van Boxtel, C., & Van Drie, J. (2017). Measuring epistemological beliefs in history education: An exploration of naïve and nuanced beliefs. International Journal of Educational Research 83, 120-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2017.03.003
Van Boxtel, C., Voet, M., & Stoel, G. (2021). Inquiry learning in history. In R. Golan Duncan & C. Chinn (Eds.), International Handbook of Inquiry and Learning (Vol. 1, pp. 296-310). Routledge.
Voet, M., & De Wever, B. (2016). History teachers’ conceptions of inquiry-based learning, beliefs about the nature of history, and their relation to the classroom context. Teaching and Teacher Education 55, 57–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2015.12.008
Wansink, B., Akkerman, S., Vermunt, J., Haenen, J., & Wubbels, T. (2017). Epistemological tensions in prospective Dutch history teachers’ beliefs about the objectives of secondary education. Journal of Social Studies Research, 41(1), 11–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jssr.2015.10.003
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