Bob Bain

Bain teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in history, history education, teacher education and foundations of education. His interests revolve around the intersection between disciplinary ways of knowing social science disciplines and the teaching and learning those disciplines in a wide range of contexts, including classrooms, museums, online and in every day experiences. His current research centers around distinctive approaches to “doing” and to “teaching” history across multiple scales of time and space, work that has emerged from his years teaching world history and more recently as the faculty lead on the Big History Project. In addition, he serves as consultant to the Historic Ford Estates outreach to teachers. In work focused on teacher learning, Bain and colleague Elizabeth Birr Moje developed Teaching and Learning the Disciplines through Clinical Practice Rounds, an approach to learning to teach that stresses discipline-based adolescent literacy teacher education. In 2010, the Provost of the University of Michigan awarded Bain and Moje the Teaching Innovation Prize for the project.

 Bain has worked on history and social science education projects at the national level (e.g., for the American Historical Association, National History Center, College Board, National Assessment Governing Board), the state level (e.g., chair of Michigan’s Social Studies Content Expectations Committee), and the local level (e.g., Historic Ford Estates, Long Beach Unified Schools, Flint Schools, Cleveland Public Schools). Between 2010 and 2014, he served as the chair of the Secondary Teacher Education program.

 Bain has received awards for teaching at both the high school and university levels, including the College Educator of the Year Award from the Michigan Council of Social Studies in both 2008 and 2011. In 2000, the Carnegie Foundation selected him as a Carnegie Scholar in the Carnegie Academy of Teaching and Learning and he continues as one of the Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lecturers.