Contained risk taking: teacher educator strategies for teaching hard history

Purpose Because preservice teachers (PSTs) need effective strategies to address the risks of teaching hard history, teacher educators must select approaches and strategies for teaching PSTs how to avoid, contain, or embrace the risks of teaching hard history. The purpose of this study was to explore one teacher educator’s strategies for teaching PSTs how to contain the risks of teaching hard history. Design/methodology/approach This study reports partial findings from Phase I of a multiple case research study of PSTs during their secondary social studies methods class and student teaching experiences during the 2021–2022 academic year. Data included surveys, semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations, and documents. Findings Findings indicate that the teacher educator taught five strategies for containing risk while simultaneously enacting risk containment herself. Four of the risk containment strategies shared characteristics with prior research; one strategy, grounding teaching in the state social studies standards, is a novel strategy that adds to the existing body of research. Originality/value This study contributes to and extends the research on containing the risk of teaching hard history in secondary social studies. One strategy taught by the teacher educator, grounding teaching in the state social studies standards, adds to the body of scholarship on teacher educators’ strategies for containing the risks of teaching hard history.