| This study explored the actions of pre-service history teachers before and during their practicum in secondary schools. It aimed to discover what tensions impacted on the pre-service teachers' decision-making when they taught history for the first time. A Ricoeurian philosophical framework, hermeneutic at its core, underpinned the study. Thus while the study drew heavily on research literature in the fields of history education, pre-service education and the discipline of history, it also aimed to see how school history may be seen through a different hermeneutic philosophical lens.;Pre-service teachers were given space to articulate authentically what they were doing and why they were doing it. It also aimed to attend to what pre-service teachers considered equated to good judgement in their teaching. Paying close attention to the pre-service teachers' receptivity, recognition of opportunity, perceptiveness and significance in their teaching lives was therefore a key reference point for this research.;This study allowed the voice of pre-service teachers to be heard in an area that has not yet been fully addressed in history education research. It provided space to explore several aspects of history teaching and learning in some depth, all of which the pre-service teachers raised. It paid attention to how the pre-service teachers perceived themselves as learners of history education alongside their pupils, partner teachers and university staff. This study therefore opened up opportunity for future dialogue between the pre-service teacher and the researcher as university pre-service educator, as well as with the mentoring staff of schools in their practicum settings.;A qualitative hermeneutic approach was used to collect and analyse the pre-service teacher experiences. In the first stage of the research two focus groups were conducted with history/social studies pre-service teachers from Alberta, Canada and Oxford, England. The purpose of the focus group work was to unpeel layers of understanding about history that pre-service teachers had prior to their practicum. In the second phase, six pre-service teachers (three from England, and three from Alberta) were observed and interviewed after teaching historically based lessons. The focus group and interview data were inductively analyzed, using Nvivo, to generate general and specific themes. |
