The relationship between past and history in teachers’ theoretical understandings and professional practice

Perceived inconsistencies in history teachers’ epistemological beliefs have been a recurring theme in research on epistemic cognition. In this article, we explore how teachers discuss history's epistemology when presented with different scenarios where epistemology might be an issue. A study design aimed at capturing teachers thinking in different contexts was adopted, and through semi-structured interviews with history teachers in Quebec and Sweden we could follow changes in nuance by analyzing teacher statements in relation to their ideas about the relationship between the past itself and the (teachable) history about the past, when discussing these issues in relation to different scenarios. The results point to teachers articulating rather well-adjusted and consistent epistemological beliefs when discussing the matter at a theoretical level while tending to adapt these beliefs — probably for pedagogical and practical reasons — when they discuss their own teaching and specific classroom situations. We argue that the teachers rarely seem to be notice the changes in their epistemological reasoning, but changes tend to go from complicated thought to more straightforward when complexity in context increases.