The History Survey as a Site of Teacher Education: A Trifocal Analysis of Content, Epistemology, and Pedagogy

History survey courses, often required in teacher preparation programs, potentially provide prospective teachers a place to learn historical content, epistemology, and pedagogy. This study examines one history survey course as a site of teacher preparation. Through analysis of instruction, student writing, and semi-structured interviews, it reports how the historian taught, the development of students’ disciplinary knowledge, and what prospective teachers noticed of the historian’s pedagogy. The study analyses how the historian’s pedagogical practices, including weekly written interpretations of primary sources, scaffolded writing prompts, and in-class modeling sessions, reinforced the epistemology of history. Over the course of the semester, focal students demonstrated improved understanding of historical content and epistemology through descriptions of history and evidence-based interpretive writing. However, prospective teachers did not fully notice the course’s pedagogical practices as appropriate for their own teaching practice. This study highlights the support prospective teachers need to learn historical pedagogy within history survey courses.