The chapters in this book address two important questions, what knowledge in history is, and how and why we should teach it. As key similarities arise across many of the chapters, at times, perhaps, with minor specifications that underscore different focus points, two main tensions nonetheless come to the fore. If left unanswered, these tensions, I believe, run the risk of confusing the ways in which we come to understand pre- and in-service teachers’ epistemological beliefs about history and their epistemic uses of it in their teaching. The first tension relates to what appears to be an inadvertently strong (over)reliance on history-as-discipline for understanding what history is and what knowledge in history looks like, as opposed to a more experiential or practical life approach, which is also evident but much less present and articulated. The second tension challenges the assumption that a direct influence exists (or should exist) between pre- and in-service teachers’ epistemological beliefs about history and how they (intend to) teach the subject. This understanding contrasts with what seems to be a more practice-oriented idea where pre- and in-service teachers’ reliance on their hands-on knowledge, or practical wisdom, when teaching should matter more and should consequently form the starting point of our reflections on how to teach history.

As these two tensions speak to potential gaps in our understanding, an even more fundamental question comes to light, one where our positionalities and perhaps even our unintentional preferences and normative assumptions about what we seek as researchers come into view. At play here is the importance of creating the proper conditions for our work to flourish as expansively as possible and to result in its most productive outcomes. It is perhaps uncontestable that, as history educators and researchers, we seek to better grasp history’s deep worth as a subject and to better define its role and purpose as something useful or valuable to transmit to learners and to somehow employ to transform them and the world we live in for the better. With this footing, some key questions I ask are the following. What interpretive lens do we—as researchers—employ when we think about history, its epistemology, and its transmission in schools? Does how we view the world, and history more specifically, influence what we seek to understand and how we go about analysing and interpreting our data? Ultimately, what is it that we aim to do with history and historical knowledge? Why do we believe we need history, and based on this, what is it that we must do to transfer its gained wisdoms to newer generations?

Given my own interests in historical consciousness and the sociocultural workings of our sense-making, I believe one main approach for engaging in this kind of work is to do so self-reflexively (Zanazanian, 2010, 2015, 2019, 2025). Identifying gaps in our knowledge as researchers and how we can overcome them can perhaps contribute to finding new starting points for moving forward in ways that are conducive to finding solutions or pathways for novel ways to engage in our work. By looking at how our own historical sense-making influences the positionalities we hold, we can better understand the kinds of mindsets and incognizant thinking that influence and impel us to engage in the actions that we do, and, more specifically, to examine the kinds of guiding questions we raise for our empirical investigations of what history is and how we should teach it (Zanazanian, 2019, 2025). Acquiring knowledge of the pre-given understandings we employ for addressing the problems we seek to resolve would be key, particularly if we are able to analyse and to come to terms with how our sense-making works. By being more transparent with how we position ourselves and approach our research, we may perhaps decide to alter habits and can thus come to better articulate the different ways we seek to make change and to do so in a more positive and rewarding way. What we can gain is a broadening of horizons and the development of newer understandings of what history is and what it can do.

In what follows, I outline the two main areas of reflection that emerge from the chapters in the book, which I depict with some key themes that consequently arise, focusing on their specificities. I then describe the two tensions that seem to also surface. I offer a brief discussion to elaborate and follow through with some core questions that I raise for moving forward in our field. Given our already complex and increasingly interrelated, mutually dependent, multicultural, digital world, which is currently facing such challenges as climate change and a clashing of knowledge systems and ideologies, these kinds of questions I believe are important for finding ways to adapt to our rapidly changing realities. In ending with Canadian history educator, Roger Simon’s (2004, 2005) approach to historiographic poetics where lived testimonies are central for exercising our reflexivity, I put forward a strategy that we—as researchers—can perhaps use for making what is integral to us become an object for critical thought and transformation.

Two Broad Areas of Reflection

As mentioned above, two broad areas of reflection seem to arise from the collection of the chapters in this book. The first area of reflection relates to how to best capture and account for both the process and outcomes of pre- and in-service teachers’ interactions with historical knowledge. The concern here is to better comprehend these actors’ key understandings of what historical knowledge is, what its main purposes are, and how it can or should be employed. The second area of reflection relates to how to best recognize and foster the acquisition, integration, and accumulation of historical knowledge in teachers and learners, and, ultimately, to what ends. This, in turn, invokes the means and reasons for transmitting understandings of historical knowledge and its workings.

Important similarities arise across these two areas, at times, perhaps, with minor specifications that highlight small differences. These similarities are more justly located along different continua, surfacing variously at a conceptual, contextual, methodological, and practical level. For the first, at a conceptual level, it goes without saying that all authors in the book see history as something highly complex. In doing so, most of them tend to particularly equate history and historical knowledge with history-as-discipline or with what professional historians in academic settings do. Based on this comprehension, some authors seem to want to have teachers and student teachers attain a certain level of historical understanding and thinking that is reflective of how academic historians think and engage in their craft, which they would transmit in their own teaching when in the field. Advocating the importance of these skills, some authors tend to further believe that the ability of capturing or attaining this level of thinking can be done through the development of different stages of sense-making. Although many are careful to not see this approach as a completely linear process, there nonetheless seems to be a normative understanding, where one level of thinking is better than the other, each leading progressively to the type of thinking that can be found in the ideal-type historian’s mind. The best form of thinking that is evoked here is that of a criterialist’s mindset, where students are to ultimately weigh between distinct options and to decide upon the better (historical) argument or perspective through the analysis of source-based evidence. In recognizing reality’s complexity, the underlying objective is for students to treat knowledge with nuance and care and to essentially take critical distance from the consequent claims they put forth. In contrast, other authors in the book seem to problematize this developmental approach (but not necessarily the contents of what different emerging stances mean). They, in turn, tend to perceive epistemic beliefs or stances as being multiple and working simultaneously in people, including pre- and in-service teachers, depending on the context they are in and the issue they are dealing with. For example, someone may exhibit more of a criterialist attitude regarding a particular issue but then may be more relativist or realist for another, especially if their emotions and moral reasoning are involved or questioned. Some may even be in between stances, which is how the case of wobbling is seen by a few authors. Perhaps in viewing these emerging stances as ideal-type tendencies, as I suggest, we would be less distraught or perplexed by our findings in accepting that the reality of people’s epistemic beliefs is fundamentally located in the cracks between them. This understanding contrasts with attempts to try and fit different people (with varying subjectivities and life experiences) into neat boxes according to each stance’s ideational criteria.

Building on this idea, at a contextual level, practically all authors agree that some key factors come into play in shaping pre- and in-service teachers’ beliefs about history and its teaching. Nearly all would concede that work-related factors are important. These include issues related to time, curricular demands and objectives, the impact of teaching to the test or standardized exams, as well as teachers’ own views on students’ cognitive development and varying capacities for understanding history as subject matter. Other influential factors refer to teachers’ various lived experiences, ranging from their prior and on-going teaching experiences, their prior educational experiences, their personal life experiences, and the wider, historical experiences of their communities, cultures, and epistemologies of belonging that continue to impact them in their present lives. These latter experiences particularly relate to the different degrees of attachment people may have to these identities and their varying levels of influence on their sense-making. Forming “knowledges, resources, and repertoires”, Johan Wassermann and Kate Angier, for example, state how their student teachers’ “epistemological orientations [constitute] a mosaic that is both entangled and emergent, sophisticated and simplistic, cognitive and spiritual, public, practical and personal”. To my liking, both Wassermann and Angier, as well as Robert Parkes, particularly focus on pre- and in-service teachers’ historical consciousness, the influence of their various historical cultures, as well as the sway of their pedagogical cultures of belonging. As teacher intentions, which result from these influences, play an important role, so do the current-day politics of pre- and in-service teachers’ respective societies and communities of practice, including their own ideologies regarding the kind of world they want to create, and their respective positionalities that arise as a result.

At a methodological level, key ideas emerge regarding the capture, reading, and interpretation of teachers’ epistemological beliefs about history. Some authors offer input into better ways of eliciting the requisite information for empirical study and analysis. They highlight the importance of grasping epistemological beliefs through examining pre- and in-service teachers in action, through doing or accomplishing a task. Catherine Duquette and her colleagues, for example, suggest executing such investigations through analysing teachers’ assessment practices, where, in thinking through doing, teachers are given the opportunity to reflect on their own epistemological understandings of history and its disciplinary nature. Kenneth Nordgren, in turn, proposes extracting and studying teachers’ epistemological understandings of history within the context of ongoing task performances, such as when they plan and prepare lessons. Taking a long-term view, Sarah Drake Brown and Richard Hughes suggest looking at the liminal or the in-between spaces of pre-service teachers’ trajectories from high school to college or university, their teacher education programs, to in-service teaching. From a more conceptual angle, others, such as Martin Nitsche, underscore the importance of looking beyond the developmental workings of pre- and in-service teachers’ historical sense-making, and to also investigate their epistemic beliefs in terms of dimensions, context, and situatedness. Similarly, Vojtech Ripka and his colleagues highlight the need of distinguishing between general and situational beliefs, where they discuss the importance of considering teachers’ situatedness in their sense-making. Moving beyond the developmental approach, Chih-Ching Chang mentions grasping pattern-based models of epistemic beliefs, whereas Marjolein Wilke and Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse put forth the idea of mapping practical epistemologies, believing that it provides more varied and hence more accurate depictions of teacher beliefs. Some authors like David-Alexandre Wagner even question and highlight the challenges of self-reporting instruments, such as questionnaires for measuring pre- and in-service teachers’ epistemic beliefs. Because one main outcome that emerges is the notion of wobbling, or epistemic inconsistencies, he suggests viewing questionnaires as approximative tools, and hence “a rough indicator” of “student-teachers’ progress over time” as opposed to “an accurate measurement of people’s epistemological beliefs”. Most authors in the book also mention the importance of bringing in a mixed methods approach, where questionnaires are used in conjunction with (semi-structured) interviews. Others particularly highlight the importance of gaining qualitative input.

At a more practical level, some authors in the book also offer suggestions for teacher preparation and professional development programs. Of importance is the idea of encouraging pre- and in-service teachers to become more self-aware of their thinking, highlighting the necessity for reflexive thought. Self-awareness of their criteria for constructing historical knowledge is put forth, as is self-awareness of their own epistemologies regarding second order concepts. Awareness of the impact of past histories on one’s current day experiences and sense of belonging is also considered, which can influence how teachers come to understand and appropriate historical thinking in their practice. The aim here is to promote self-reflexivity (either aimed towards a better self-understanding or towards gaining disciplinary based knowledge) to the ends of developing and contextualizing mindsets. Of importance here is history’s importance for making sense of life experiences as well as of consequent teaching practices. One main result could be what Robert Parkes describes as epistemic fluency (of different schools of historical thought) where teachers are “flexible and adapt […] to different ways of knowing”, as an expanded form “of historical literacy”, which they would then bring to their teaching. Others still suggest the need to find ways to align epistemological beliefs about school knowledge with disciplinary knowledge, and to moreover create the proper conditions to start teaching as criterialists. On top of fostering reflexive mindsets and attitudes, themes related to classroom management also surface, particularly the idea of maintaining proper conditions for handling conflicts. Given pre-service teachers’ preference for “neutrality” or for promoting “both sides of the story”, which serve as “a refuge from which to expound a pseudo-balanced, non-disruptive history” in South African classrooms, Sarah Godsell suggests that “history teachers need to be able to manage conflict in their own minds as well as their classrooms”. The idea is to create safe spaces for reflexive practice, and to foster learning through employing “skills around history epistemically and pedagogically”, so that they can navigate such difficulties.

Two Key Parallel Tensions

It is through building on these broad strokes that the two key tensions emerge. They arise in parallel to the areas of reflection listed above. These tensions mostly concern us, as researchers in the field, but they can also be extended to the pre- and in-service teachers we work with. The first, in relation to what knowledge in history is, touches upon the overreliance on history-as-discipline for viewing history and how it should be taught. Do we automatically view historical knowledge as knowledge gained through the historical method, as practiced by the academic historian? Do we automatically see historical knowledge as constituting a unique mode of thought that seeks and better grasps, albeit plausibly, how things could have transpired in former times? Do we consequently see history as a corrective of sorts to people’s general tendencies to misread or misinterpret the past, as can easily happen with the reiteration of common stories of the past, as they emerge from prior experiences? Based on the chapters of this book, I would argue that most authors do. At the same time, a move in a new direction seems to also be emerging, one where discussions of historical consciousness and culture, reflexivity, mnemonic communities of belonging, implications of ongoing lived histories, or Sankofa, form part of the décor. From a sociocultural perspective, these latter ideas point to the belief of how different lived and inherited experiences come to affect us and continue to impact us in many ways, influencing how we make sense of historical knowledge and employ it in our everyday endeavours. In a manner that may not readily nor customarily come to mind, history, in this view, is internal and intertwined within us, or even more so, it is us, it is our being. It constitutes the background to our meaning-making, and fundamentally forms who we are and what we embody as knowledge through our various lived realities that genuinely mark us through our different gained inheritances, developed by our dealings with what is handed down by means of our many processes of socialization.

In favour of a more embodied or practical life approach to history, and perhaps because of my own interests in historical consciousness and its sociocultural workings (Zanazanian, 2025), I wonder whether the variations in pre- and in-service teachers’ epistemological beliefs, such as epistemic wobbling and switching, as they are believed to be impacted by these actors’ own subjectivities, could be better understood from the perspective of the overarching presence of their lived and embodied histories? Perhaps a fair share of these actors’ challenges in grasping history-as-discipline’s epistemological workings arises from the bigger impact of their lived and embodied histories on their everyday sense-making? Maybe their embodied histories creep into the picture and complicate the somewhat linear and modernist understandings of what we—as researchers—may believe history is, how it is done, and what, how, and why it should be transmitted? If our normative assumptions or taken-for-granted views of history emerge from a potentially automatic association with history-as-discipline, which is then consequently seen as a corrective to people’s subjectivities, would that not taint our expectations of what we would like to see or promote? Is this interference of actors’ embodied histories the reason why we still have a hard time in getting pre- and in-service teachers to think in a criterialist manner? Could it be because discrepancies between these actors’ guiding embodied histories and our expectations arise in our attempts to measure their mindsets and thinking? If the variations that surface in pre- and in-service teachers’ beliefs stem from their own embodied histories and historical knowledge, should we not perhaps stop for a second and wonder whether we should be looking at things differently? Should we not also reflect on what our own embodied histories are telling us and suggesting what we do? In following American social historian Carl Becker’s (1932) logic when describing the notion of living history from nearly a century ago, can we ever really escape from our ordinary, practical life uses of history for making sense of time’s flow? If we accept that people’s everyday, common-sense, and intuitive understandings and uses of history hold a strong pull over them, as these very understandings and uses also possess a firm grip over the work of professional historians, should we not start to think of teacher’s epistemic beliefs of history and its teaching differently?

Intertwined with this all-encompassing presence of our embodied histories, and even perhaps resulting from it, is the second tension. Arising at a practical level in some of the chapters of this book, it refers to the degree of the direct influence of epistemological beliefs about history on pre- and in-service teacher’s pedagogical practices and questions whether these beliefs directly impact their teaching. Some authors seem to assume this link exists without question, others, assigning a certain degree of importance to this link, also point to other factors that come into play, while others still, in a smaller number, suggest that it is rather teachers’ pedagogical beliefs that are ultimately the main source of how pre- and in-service teachers envision teaching history in schools. Despite these variations, there still seems to be a reliance on history-as-discipline as the norm of what historical knowledge is and how it is constructed that the authors constantly invoke, even if the idea of practice over theory in their analysis of pre- and in-service teachers’ practices is central. To inform best practices, Wilke and Van Nieuwenhuyse, for example, recommend equipping teachers “with a profound understanding of the nature of historical knowledge and knowledge construction” and to “ensure that teachers’ epistemological beliefs about school knowledge are aligned with their epistemological beliefs about disciplinary knowledge”, despite the admitted complexity and difficulty in establishing “a clear connection between teachers’ epistemological beliefs [about history] and their [teaching]”.

While this suggestion, from the perspective of our general governing norms of what (disciplinary) history is and how it should be taught, makes perfect sense, it, however, also raises interesting questions about the kind of value we assign to pre- and in-service teachers’ practical wisdom when it comes to teaching history. Do gained wisdoms of teachers’ practical knowledge of their profession matter, and should they matter more than our concerns for directly connecting their practice to history-as-discipline? Should their practical epistemologies instead constitute starting points for examining their beliefs about history to see what emerges and what is done in terms of knowledge transfer? If we introduced an embodied or practical life approach to history, would we not be able to connect with and develop these wisdoms even more, in tandem with their ordinary, common-sense, intuitive beliefs about history and its workings? In having teachers and learners reflect on and understand the workings of these connections, would such an approach not set the stage to moreover help them nuance their sense-making, especially if they were given the tools to self-reflexively analyse their own thinking patterns and to then perhaps get them to understand the sense-making of their peers? Would such a focus not help them learn to take critical distance from the knowledge claims they make and to handle their assumptions about the world with nuance and care? Would this then not form a basis for engaging in mutual dialogue and exchange with others who are different from us, and would it not then form an important part of reflexive listening and deliberating, much needed for the betterment of our societies and their democratic functioning? If the thinking done by historians is “counterintuitive” or “unnatural” and is thus difficult for teachers and learners alike to grasp (Wineburg, 2001; Lee, 2005; Wilschut, 2019), would it then not make sense, in light of the two tensions that arise in this book, to commence our thinking about history and its teaching from a more natural, intuitive, or everyday standpoint, mirroring the gained wisdoms of everyday practical life as they impact pre- and in-service teachers’ historical sense-making and the way they envision teaching history? This overall questioning, as I try to argue here, should be cultivated further to carve out an area of investigation that I believe is largely understudied and underdeveloped and that requires our attention.

General Discussion

Based on the foregoing discussion, I wonder whether there is room for us to decentre ourselves from the main norms and assumptions that seem to reinforce visions of the ideal-type historian in the work we do. This questioning is not to say that the latter understanding of history is wrong or bad, but to simply view it as one cultural approach of doing history among several others, and to thus open ourselves up in terms of the expectations we seem to anticipate from the research we conduct and the pre- and in-service teachers we work with, and whose teaching we examine and evaluate. What I suggest is to focus on a more self-reflexive approach, as some of our authors mention, and to do so in terms of our own theoretical and empirical research. I argue that we should reflect on our thinking and figure out what we are lacking, and why, and to fundamentally account for it. This requires reflection on whether history as done by the historian is what we immediately view as being history and whether there aren’t other forms of history from which we can draw some inspiration for helping students to understand what history is and what it can do for our present-day societies. Perhaps there are other forms of doing history that constitute part of our cultural memory and that can be brought to the fore.

Although elements of a shift in how we both view history and the knowledge it produces can already be seen as gradually emerging in the field, they nonetheless seem to be undervalued (Zanazanian & Nordgren, 2019). This underestimation is clearly visible in how historical consciousness is conceived of in the teaching of history. Academic history is quite predominant as a guiding framework for conceptualizing historical consciousness and the rationale for its pedagogical uses. It is seen possibly in contrast to everyday life’s embeddedness in our different ways of making sense of time’s flow, which seems to be associated negatively with people’s many lived subjectivities. When following a modernist, disciplinary understanding of history, these subjectivities are contrasted with the adoption of a more objective approach for interpreting time’s flow. What is left out is an understanding of how our self-identification and lived experiences form an important part of how we develop standpoints and engage in reflexive thought necessary for broadening horizons and evolving as individuals and members of wider society.

Implicit in history’s objective approach is the need for a formal, codified, and structured way of knowing that is perceived to be ready to rigorously prepare its recipients for future life in a complex and ever-changing world. As the way the ideal-type (modernist) historian thinks and engages in their practice is widely believed to hold such an ability, the historical method is seen as providing learners the ability to view the past on its own terms, free, at best, of any biases that may consequently arise. The anticipation is to somehow superimpose this approach on learners’ everyday historical sense-making, with the aim of attaining a desired historical consciousness that, in turn, would help them to better engage with social reality (Grever & Adriaansen, 2017, 2019; Wilschut, 2019; Seixas, 2016, 2017a, 2017b). Learners are to thus develop an inquisitive mind that questions and seeks plausible “truths” of what actually happened. At the very least, such an historical sense is to be employed as a sort of measuring rod for gauging the extent to which “correct” or less “subjective” engagements have taken place, which in turn are to serve in countering emotional and less critical and analytical interactions with the past (Jensen, 2009; Clark & Peck, 2019; Clark & Grever, 2018; Grever, 2019). Underlying this pull is mainly a modernist approach to producing historical knowledge and its inherent embrace of a linear understanding of time, guided by such structuring notions as development, progress, and change.

One important result of such an embrace, however, is the dismissal of the experiences and wisdoms of alternative epistemological knowledge systems. Examining these latter approaches to historical sense-making, I argue, could better democratize our uses of history in schools and make room for new ways of knowing the world that could only empower our newer generations, more so than they already are with the current disciplinary model in use. Looking to alternative systems of thought and more embodied approaches to sense-making could help open the teaching of history to explore wider cultural, ethical, and temporal implications for what history is, how it works, how it should be employed, and how it should be taught. It can also consequently come to better foster learners’ own growth and development through their inner expansion, helping them excel as talented humans ready to be a part of and to contribute to the world and its many societies and cultures.

Conclusion

With these perspectives in mind, I wonder whether we should constantly problematize our own understandings of historical knowledge self-reflexively to specifically raise awareness of our (and others’) ongoing engagements in epistemic sense-making. Doing this would particularly enable us to reflect on our evolving positionalities and to continually account for our consequent knowledge claims when seeking to make a difference through our work and to attain different forms of positive social change. The purpose of this task would be to allow us to embrace and account for our subjective experiences and beliefs, and to see how it can help us to attain our objectives, while being responsive to the needs of others, especially in our times of rapidly changing world realities. Underlying this approach, I argue, is an overall process of exploration, self-discovery, and personal expansion, permitting us, as researchers, to evolve at our own pace, according to our own needs and abilities for constructing and acting upon the historical knowledge we create and use.

As reflexive thinking provides much-needed openness for self-reflection and change, its relevance lies in our ability to constantly question our positionality and to take critical distance from the very knowledge we create and use. This course of action involves asking questions about what we hear or read as well as being able to reflect on our own thinking, on why we ask the questions that we do, and on why we react in certain ways when we get the answers that we seek. In thinking about what this process says about us and our interactions with others and our surroundings, it moreover entails trying to understand different points of view, while being alert to our own outlook and keeping an open mind to the possibility of broadening our horizons. Ultimately, reflexive listening speaks to the need of reading in between the lines and trying to grasp the logic of what is being said or presented and basically being done.

In building on the ideas of Canadian history educator, Roger Simon (2004, 2005), we can perhaps proceed in this form of engagement by considering and carefully listening to pre- and in-services teachers’ lived realities and experiences in teaching history as testimony. Listening attentively, or rather self-reflexively, in following Simon’s line of argument, requires paying attention to our urge to ask difficult questions (even unanswerable ones) that press for answers that seemingly promise help in deciphering what is to be heard in the testimony we listen to. The key here is to look for absences in the testimony that solicit questions, which if known would provide a fuller picture. Double attentiveness, according to Simon, is thus needed; that of listening to the testimony of the one who is speaking and that of listening to the questions we find ourselves asking when we face this testimony. This mental space is where we could ask questions about our own questions, aiming to better understand why the information we seek is important. Although Simon’s ideas relate to testimonies of the past, we can still receive what we hear through our research as counsel and use that to decentre ourselves from ourselves, from our own egos, to then open up and revise our current positionalities in ways that can be beneficial for the pre- and in-service teachers we work with and their students, for our field of interest and research, and for the wider communities and societies we belong to.

What I thus suggest, in response to the two tensions that arise in the chapters of this book, is for us—as researchers—to reflexively listen to our peers’ and students’ lived testimonies regarding history and its teaching and to ask ourselves: Why are these key actors saying what they are saying? If I view their feedback as counsel, what are they requesting me to do? What is it about my research or practice that reinforces the status quo? What can I do to help make change, hopefully for the better? In sharing the different ways in which we voice our concerns, it is hoped that a greater understanding will emerge of both the challenges that pre- and in-service history teachers face when understanding what history is and seeking ways to teach it, and, more specifically, the main problem areas that particularly make it hard for our field of research to find consensus on. Only by undertaking this reflection can we move the conversation forward in a way that is open and inclusive of the demands and needs of the pre- and in-service teachers we work with.