My proposal involves an on-site visit in Fall 2022 with Dr. Lindsay Gibson in the Faculty of Education, UBC. Dr. Gibson is an ideal faculty sponsor, due to his expertise in historical thinking, experience designing lessons and workshops, and expressed interest in historical empathy. My teaching and research experience has been situated in Ontario, so I welcome the opportunity to learn about research and curriculum in B.C. The host institution offers graduate and B.Ed. courses in history and social studies education, which I would contribute to in two ways.
First, Dr. Gibson has invited me to lead a graduate seminar on historical empathy. By Fall 2022, I will be analyzing my interview data, so the seminar discussions would allow me to share my preliminary findings while considering other interpretations and perspectives on historical empathy. This experience would be invaluable to informing my theoretical framework of historical empathy, a main goal and contribution of my dissertation.
Second, Dr. Gibson and I will design and implement a lesson that models historical empathy for teacher candidates, which is focused on a Canadian history topic, aligned with historical thinking, and oriented towards cultivating understanding and care within and beyond history classrooms. We would aim to highlight relationships between the cognitive and affective dimensions of historical empathy, as this has not been clearly articulated in scholarship to date. This is an area of focus for my dissertation research and being able to share a publishable-quality lesson plan would illuminate the theoretical framework presented in my dissertation and contribute greatly to our understanding of how historical empathy can be implemented in practice. Dr. Gibson and I would gather feedback from teacher candidates to improve the lesson for future use and share our findings with others in the history education community through publications and presentations.