Date of Degree
2026
Degree Name
Ed.D. (Doctor of Education)
Department
Department of Curriculum and Instruction (CI)
Director
Lampi, Jodi
Committee Members
Burch, Kerry; Johnson, Laura Ruth
Keywords
Social Studies, Methodology Course, Elementary Education
Abstract
This dissertation examined preservice teachers’ expectations of their social studies methods course. Methods courses serve as a transition point helping preservice teachers to take content knowledge and learn how to use it as an educator. Social studies methods was selected due to its unique position in elementary education. It is a subject area that is no longer a core subject. Despite that, teachers are still expected to provide students with the content knowledge. The expectations matter because of how they influence preservice teachers’ approaches to the course.
As a phenomenological case study, qualitative methods were employed to better understand how epistemological beliefs affected their expectations of the course. Data collection occurred over a 16 week semester with weekly observations and three interviews. Triangulation was completed with course documents, participant work, and programmatic documentation. The data was open coded, thematically coded, and analytic memoing was used to explore the themes. The successive interviews shared a common base of questions, with each one adjusted to address the participants’ personal responses and actions during observations.
The study revealed that participant expectations varied considerably, despite shared experiences in their program. Their expectations of the course spanned from thinking the course would provide them with content knowledge to learning methods that only applied to social studies. Throughout the research, epistemological beliefs regarding roles inside the classroom revealed their positionality on the foundation of knowledge and consistently placed the onus of their learning to teach on the professor.
Expansion of expectation research is suggested. It would assist teacher educators in designing and implementing programs that better help preservice teachers understand that they need to explicitly make the shift from being a student to being a teacher. The methods course is where this shift should manifest.
Publisher
Northern Illinois University
Rights Statement
In Copyright
Rights Statement 2
NIU theses and dissertations are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors, unless otherwise indicated.
Recommended Citation
Clark Bremer, Jeanine A., "What Do They Expect? Understanding Preservice Teachers' Views on a Social Studies Teaching Methodology Course" (2026). Dissertations of Practice. 116.
https://huskiecommons.lib.niu.edu/allgraduate-disspractice/116
