- Title
- Four Approaches to the Knowledge Versus Skills Problem in the Teaching of History
- Creator
- Parkes, Robert John
- Relation
- Agora Vol. 57, Issue 1, p. 3-6
- Publisher
- History Teachers' Association of Victoria
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- The degree of focus on knowledge or skills in History teaching can lead students to accept or question a single account of the past, or even leave multiple accounts in contention. In this short piece I want to provide a framework for self-reflection that somewhat addresses the issue of skills and content, but also takes a step towards thinking about History education in a different way-as a means of understanding ourselves as historical beings. Seixas' Three Approaches to History Teaching In the late 1990s, Seixas noted that when teachers attended professional development workshops run by historians, the historians typically focused on delivering 'content' rather than offering the kind of nuanced explanation of their topic they would share at conferences with other academic historians, such as the limitations of the available evidence or the interpretive problems they faced.7 Of course, seeing schools as places in which a common narrative of the nation is taught is the favoured position of many conservative politicians. History is always a narrative that exceeds the sum of the available evidence as it attempts to explain what happened in the past, and why, using historically locatable methodologies based on specific values, agreed rules of evidence, and beliefs about the nature of knowledge.16 This approach makes the study of History always a balancing act between examining the traces of the past and what has previously been written about that past.17 This approach turns the gaze of historians upon themselves, and is absent in Seixas' tripartite framework.18 Towards Historical Self-consciousness The four approaches form a logical typology, and should be understood as a reflective tool rather than an empirical model.
- Subject
- history teaching; multiple accounts; self-reflection; education
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1495482
- Identifier
- uon:54027
- Identifier
- ISSN:0044-6726
- Language
- eng
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