Beginning Teachers Thinking Historically? Negotiating the Context of Virginia's High-Stakes Tests

In this article, the authors explore the effects of Virginia's high stakes history tests on beginning teachers' "notions of historical thinking," and briefly consider the literature on historical thinking, high-stakes testing, and beginning teachers. Data sources for this study included interviews, observations, and classroom documents of seven beginning high school history teachers who work in the high-stakes testing environment of Virginia. The interviews and observations revealed that when thinking about, talking about, and implementing instruction, the teachers appeared concerned with implementing a variety of instructional approaches in order to engage their students and to fill a block period. Explicit discussions of or references to historical thinking did not appear in their responses, but references to "critical thinking" did. When asked to describe resources used in the class, teachers did refer to historical sources, but most often as a means to interest or engage their students, to add another element of variety to instruction, or to teach "critical thinking" skills. Implications of these findings are discussed. (Contains 5 tables and 18 notes.)