Historical Films in History Classrooms: Documentaries or Fiction Films? Teachers’ Views and Practices

Abstract

Visual culture evolves as the dominant platform for our encounter with the past. Moreover‚ the impact of movies on shaping our historical culture is considered powerful. History Education in theory recognizes the outstanding position of movies as chief carriers of historical messages. But what are the practices employed in history classrooms? What are teachers’ conceptions‚ attitudes and instructional practices towards films? Have they inherited traditional positivist skepticism about movies’ historical veracity and accuracy? If they use films in their history classrooms‚ what kind of movies do they prefer‚ fiction or nonfiction‚ and why? These are the leading questions of the research presented in this chapter. We used a mixed methods approach to collect data from a large number of teachers in Greece. Results show that the general disciplinary conceptions and ideas on history as well as on history education have a considerable impact on instructional practices toward movies. Teachers who prefer historical documentaries for objectivity and validity reasons‚ considering these reasons central for history teaching and learning‚ use documentaries as an objective medium to support the textbooks ‘one truth’ content. On the contrary‚ teachers who criticize the content-based history teaching and the alleged objective representation of the past use historical documentaries as any other historical sources and narratives taking into consideration their subjective nature. In this second case, not only the content of history textbooks is questioned‚ but also the idea of a sole historical truth and objectivity in historical interpretation. Research data are rich and meaningful‚ connecting closely teachers’ epistemological beliefs with instructional practices of digital media‚ which movies are included in.KeywordsCinematic historyTeachers’ conceptionsMovies in history educationHistorical films and history classroomsEpistemological beliefs and instructional practices