Chapter 4: Conceptual Change and The Process of Becoming a Digital History Teacher

The process of training pre-service social studies and history teachers to effectively infuse technology into their practice is complex. In most cases, we are not only asking teachers to increase their knowledge and proficiency in using classroom technologies, we are also asking them to make conceptual changes in their overall perceptions of teaching. Schools and colleges of education sometime have only months to produce desired changes in perceptions and practice; therefore, we must carefully consider what types of experiences we should give pre-service teachers to accelerate the change process. We open this chapter by closely examining the literature concerned with the conceptual change and diffusion of innovation processes that social studies teachers are likely to take part in on their path toward becoming a “digital” history teacher. We then introduce and explain the use of Web Inquiry Projects as a strategy we used in pre-service teaching methods courses as a way to give future teachers the experiences they need to understand and see the viability of historical inquiry as a preferred method for teaching and learning, and to effectively leverage technology for this purpose. We close the chapter by introducing a conceptual change model centered on the concerns teachers have as they become effective digital history teachers. The four reflexive and recursive stages to this model are orientation, understanding, feasibility, and progression.