Middle School Geography Teachers’ Professional Development Centered around Historical Photographs

This paper describes three social studies teachers’ participation in an approximately 50-h, 13-month, Lesson Study-type professional development program called Beyond Words. The program centered around promoting teachers’ understanding of historical domain knowledge through experiences with innovative visual curriculum materials and sustained collaboration. This qualitative investigation answers: To what degree can Beyond Words help in-service geography teachers design and implement powerful instruction centered around historical photographs? Throughout Beyond Words the teachers demonstrated a spirit of open-mindedness and a willingness to experiment with unfamiliar ideas; they planned and implemented a lesson that featured engaging historical photographs, thinking critically about the past, and making claims about a public issue. At the end of the program, however, they demonstrated conventional approaches toward social studies instruction, especially regarding curriculum and assessment. The work shared here suggests that helping teachers craft high-quality questions to anchor student-inquiry and scaffolding teachers’ sensemaking of student-outcome data should be high priorities for professional development providers.