This study explores how pre-service teachers experience shifts in their perceptions, emotions, and practices while learning Indigenous education as “difficult history” within a teacher education context, and how these experiences contribute to the formation of teacher identity. Focusing on the institutionalization of Indigenous education in Canadian teacher education, the study examines a compulsory course, Indigenous Education in Canada, at a university in British Columbia (BC). Data were collected from classroom transcripts, pre-service teachers’ presentations, and lesson plans, and were analyzed using qualitative methods. The findings show that pre-service teachers did not perceive Indigenous education merely as additional historical content to be incorporated into existing national narratives. Rather, they experienced it as a reflective learning process that prompted them to critically question the positionality from which they speak about and teach this history. Emotional responses such as discomfort, confusion, and fear did not function as obstacles to learning; instead, they emerged as central pedagogical mechanisms through which established historical understandings and perceived professional positions were unsettled. As pre-service teachers designed lessons integrating Indigenous knowledge into their teaching, they became increasingly aware of the ethical responsibilities, the limits of speaking, and the inherent incompleteness of their practice. Through this process, they began to form a teacher identity centered on sustaining practice amid uncertainty, rather than relying on complete knowledge or prior preparedness. This study conceptualizes the teaching of difficult history not merely as a matter of curricular content, but as a process through which teachers come to see themselves as subjects who speak with emotion, responsibility, and positional reflexivity. By doing so, it highlights teacher education for difficult history as a process of teacher identity formation that requires ethical judgment and the acceptance of emotional tension, offering significant implications for the direction of history teacher education in the Korean context.
Haeyoung Lee (Tue,) studied this question.