History teaching could be obsolete

ITC integration in teaching has come with the income of the critic to pedagogigal models based on memorization. A paper of Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) outlines the profits of teaching by competences instead of this traditional model.

The importance of studying history from early ages is clear: it is part from our ambition to understand what y how the human being is and what kind of relationship has with its environment. This subject help us to understand time and space, to handle information and to develop our historical conscienness. However, history is taught by reading books and it doesn’t help the students to understand the society. On the contrary, students think about history as a group of closed knowledge that they have to memorize in order to pass the exams.

In the paper “Didáctica de la competencia histórica en la sociedad digital”, published in Revista de Educación, researchers Enrique Gudín, Isabel Lasala and Diego Iturriaga, from Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR) explain different tools that allow the teacher to teach by competences and work with historical sources, photographies or content curator. Those are resources very different that facilitates the develop of reflexion, recopilation and colaborative evaluation. As the authors say: knowledge society demands changes that get over the CV offer based just on the knowledge transmision, and this changes demand not just creativity but great amount of planification.

Historical approach

Experts on the study of the history have been trying to focus the history teaching towards the “historical approach”. This kind of teaching requires the design of new strategies and methodologies that allow to use the ITC resources to involve directly and actively the students.

One of this ways is for the student to learn how to work as an historian. As Enrique Gudín sais: this approach would help the students to formulate hypothesis and to distinguish casuality from the facts. We have in front of us a valuable reality that will help us to end with obsoletes didactical approaches and will make easier the colaboration in classes. This way, we will be preparing next generations for understanding what time are they live in so they can succesfully participate in their own world configuration.

Reference: Gudín de la Lama, E., Lasala Navarro, I., Iturriaga Barco, D. Didáctica de la competencia histórica en la sociedad civil, en Revista de educación, 375, enero-marzo 2017, pp. 61-85. Doi: 10.4438/1988-592X-RE-2016-375-335

 

November, 7th.- Eva Ferreras