Pedagogical stories

Pedagogical stories are unique representations of teachers' subject matter content knowledge. These stories can provide teachers with a frame for understanding complex content related to teaching. When teachers use such complex content, they almost always have to adapt it. Pedagogical stories can be one way for teachers to construct such adaptations of content. Since digital historical resources can be particularly complex, they are well suited for explanation with pedagogical stories. The following is an example of an introduction to pedagogical story about using digital historical resources related to Red Scare of the 1950s. This story starter was developed by a pre-service teacher we will call Stacy in an undergraduate methods course. In this example, Stacy is setting up a simulation and directly addresses her students.

Teaching about McCarthyism
The wonders of time travel have placed you back into the scare of the 1950s as a respectable man or woman. The atmosphere created by McCarthyism has caused you and your family great concern and rightfully so. Unexpectedly, an FBI agent knocks on your door one Saturday afternoon and says that you must testify against your neighbor, a screen writer, to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in two weeks. Fearful for your family, you are unsure of what to do. You and your neighbor have always gotten along and you would even consider him a good friend, but testifying in his favor might bring doubts and questions about whether you are associated with the Communist party. In order to make your decision about whether to testify you must complete several tasks. First, you need to research the current situation using primary and secondary sources. Find out as much about Senator McCarthy and previous HUAC hearings as possible. Second, based on your research and your own opinions, you will compose a statement that describes your decision about how you will choose to testify in the trial of your neighbor.

Stacey's lesson plays out like a story in that students had to develop their testimony as part of a bigger plot that related to the McCarthy hearings. Within the overall historical story, the fictitious story about the neighbor developed. This analogy was Stacey's representation of her subject matter content knowledge as pedagogy. She created a stimulating atmosphere in which students could use digital historical resources to develop their understanding, while being engaged in a consideration of the drama relating to the story. BUT, Stacy did not develop one very important part of her story - namely, what will students do when they "research." This a cronic problem in social studies pedagogy. While the context for research are often well develop and interesting, as is th case with Stacy's ideas, the details about how students will actually ind and use resources are just as often incomplete. One way to help teachers develop these important support mechanisms for research is to use story telling as a context. The following description is a continuation of Stacy's narrative developed to take into consideration how her students might actually conduct their research.

Teaching about McCarthyism con't
So, how are you supposed to research the "current situation?" Fortunately, you have access a whole range of materials thanks to Internet. You might be wondering how you can use the Internet in the 1950s, well just go with☺ Anyway, you have access to materials about both Senator McCarthy and HUAC. Your tasks is to carefully analysis these materials before developing your statement. We are providing you with a form for conducting your analysis. Tomorrow, I will distribute this form along with directions for how to access your materials on McCarthy and HUAC.

The goal with this continuation of Stacey's narrative is to extend the pedagogical dimensions of the story. With the inclusion of inital information about how students will complete their reseach tasks, a new storyline emerges. This second storyline compliments the original storyline about the role-playing activity to generate a context for a disciplinary-based inquiry. Additional work needs to be done to actually develop the materials for Stacey's lesson, but the groundwork has been laid for a potentially interesting and meaningful student experience.