“Are We Really Teaching Them How to Do Better?” Pre-Service Teachers Practice Teaching a Holocaust Survivor’s Testimony

This multiple case study examines how four pre-service social studies teachers (PSTs) planned and taught a lesson about Night, a seminal testimony and text in secondary Holocaust education. These cases illuminate how PSTs teach without specific preparation or instruction about how to teach texts from traumatic histories, including the Holocaust. I analyze participants’ instruction in relation to a framework for traumatic history instruction, finding that PSTs inconsistently used historical source analysis skills in their lessons. The findings of this study provide teacher educators insight into PSTs’ needs for opportunities to learn and practice teaching narratives from difficult or traumatic histories.