Historians Taking History Education Seriously

Historians in history departments like to complain about the education provided by social studies teacher certification programs and other curricula offered by schools or colleges of education. Yet there is hardly a university in the United States where historians actively engage the responsibility of educating history teachers. This is unfortunate for students who are studying to become teachers. It’s also unfortunate for the history discipline. We could learn a great deal about how the past is taught, learned, shared, and communicated by becoming seriously engaged in history education both in a teaching role and as researchers, and in the process develop more meaningful and usable engagements with the past. In the process, we could develop an expanded and deepened sense of our mission and the role we play in the university and society. This paper suggests several pathways for moving our departments towards both curricular and scholarly engagement with history education.