Developing skills through history education

• For the last few years my main part of my teaching has been within the field of Teacher Education. In order to prepare my students for their future profession as History teachers in the secondary school, my courses must of course deal with History, but also with how the learning of History can be facilitated and promoted. Learning History is of course linked to knowing History, and it was a somewhat strange experience when I suddenly realised that during my seven years of History studies – from the first undergraduate course to the PhD exam – no one had ever raised the issue of what it is to know History. Oh, we learned a lot about how to achieve historical knowledge, for instance through meticulous and critical source studies, but what that knowledge really consisted of was never discussed. So what do we mean when we say ‘Professor X really masters her subject’, or ‘Dr. Y displays a profound knowledge in his field of study’? Part of the knowledge is of course substantial (content) knowledge – but only a part. Collecting and storing facts – knowing that – doesn’t make you a historian. You must also be able to use the facts: interpret them, reason from them, make conclusions from them – knowing how. To this procedural knowledge can be added the conceptual knowledge that can be seen as a prerequisite for a scholarly approach to History. What students of History – on all levels, from primary school to postgraduate studies – is, then, not only to learn about what happened in the past but how to think about what happened in the past. And just as you will find it hard to learn playing the flute through listening to lectures or reading handbooks on flute-playing, thinking historically is very much a question of ‘learning by doing’ which means that History courses must give ample room for training the capacity of thinking. In my presentation I will further discuss possible interpretations of substance, procedure, and concepts in History studies as well as giving a few examples of how they can be illustrated and practised in class.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi -- Historia (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology -- History (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Didaktik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Didactics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

History

History teaching

Historical knowledge

History

Historia

Subject didactics

Ämnesdidaktik

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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