Why and How Should History Departments Prepare Secondary Social Studies Teachers? Occasional Paper.

This paper evolved from a conference panel presentation on the preparation of prospective high school history teachers. The four papers excerpted here are entitled: "Using History Departments to Prepare Secondary Social Studies Teachers: A Challenge for the Profession in the 21st Century" (Donald Schwartz); "Why and How Should History Departments Prepare Secondary Social Studies Teachers?" (John Shedd); "Recent Developments in History Education: A View from Illinois" (Lawrence W. McBride); and "Comment from the Classroom" (Diane Puklin). Schwartz's paper contends that solutions must be found to problems in public education at all levels and suggests that the challenge of training effective teachers should be addressed not only by school of education faculty but by faculty in all other disciplines as well. Shedd's paper cites advantages history departments might have over education departments as more effective producers of good teachers since secondary social studies teachers teach a subject and too many specialists in education are caught up in fruitless arguments about teaching in general. The paper's second part discusses the way in which history departments prepare secondary teachers better, citing the program at the State University of New York, Cortland. McBride's paper discusses the development of national and state content standards, and bases suggestions about how history departments should prepare teachers on a distinction between the systematic preparation of a reflective practitioner on the one hand and the education of a person in content and techniques on the other. Puklin's paper envisions a continuum of teacher training with one end advocating teacher education anchored in history departments and the other end favoring education departments. The suggestion is to work from both ends of this continuum. (BT)