Taiwan’s history teaching lacks the research of exemplary teachers who transform historical thinking into daily practices, and thus lacks good models for the Teacher Education curriculum. The purpose of this research is to understand how exemplary teachers teach historical thinking and how to prepare lessons through case studies. By employing the snow-bowling method, i.e., asking experts to introduce experts, the researcher described and analyzed three exemplary junior-high school history teachers and explored their beliefs about teaching, methods of teaching and factors that affected their approaches. The results show that the three teachers have their distinctive traits of teaching: Teacher A inclines to conduct disciplinary training , focuses on big ideas and the use of historical documents for inquiry, Teacher B leans toward using evidence to prove the textbook narratives, and help students empathize with historical figures, and Teacher C focuses on students’ critical thinking and personal engagement in history; hence, more efforts are made to make the connection between the past and the present. However, these teachers have a lot in common--they 1) care about historical empathy, 2) use evidence for historical thinking, 3) ask key questions and logically arrange them, 4) use cooperative learning methods to engage students, 5) use worksheets as the vehicle for teaching, learning and assessment, and 6) participate in more than one professional community to progress professionally. Through the descriptions and analyses of the cases, the present study raises three issues for the field of history teaching and encourages teachers to ponder if history teaching should be oriented toward rational-evidence, historical empathy, or reflective citizenship training.
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Instructional Planning for History Teaching: Case Studies of Exemplary Junior-high School Teachers
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