Dr G.L. Stoel (Gerhard)

As an Assistant Professor of Learning and Instruction in Social Studies and History Education, my research aims to support teachers in designing learning environments that foster students' reasoning and writing within the disciplines of history and social studies. In my PhD-research, I investigated pedagogical principles for enhancing students' ability for causal historical reasoning and the relatedness with epistemological beliefs. My postdoc research focused on the professional development of teachers. In three professional learning communities, teachers designed lessons that focused explicitly on disciplinary reasoning in subjects such as History and Social Sciences. Working with complex and open tasks, visual schemes, rubrics, scaffolds, group work and classroom discussion are recurring principles in these projects.