Abstract
This paper reports on the main results of research carried out in Portuguese history classrooms (Grades 7–9, age 12–14), with the aim of providing further understanding of how historical thinking is being developed and assessed by teachers. Although history education research in Portugal appears to have fostered some fruitful experiences in this area, this study is intended to identify practices of teaching and learning. This work also tries to highlight good practices with relevance to the development of historical thinking. In the main study, data were collected through direct observation of classroom interaction (followed by interviews with teachers) and paper-andpencil tasks (performed by students) focusing on change in history learning and metacognition. Inductive analysis and triangulation of the data helped to understand possible relationships between questioning in the classroom and thinking in history, and to highlight some features of how students' historical thinking is being developed, namely what kind of temporal orientation they construct. Teachers revealed different kinds of teaching practices during a lesson, producing different kinds of learning experiences: a model of the development of competencies in history emerged from the data, and also a set of profiles of teaching and learning moments. Although seven profiles emerged, this paper will focus on Profile 7, as it could be the most inspiring for history education.
Highlights
This article reports on the main results of a study that focused on how historical competencies were developed and assessed by teachers of Grade 7 to Grade 9 classes in Portugal
The study was intended to contribute to a diagnosis of how historical thinking has been developed and to highlight some good practices, namely those that could have been inspired by history education research in Portugal, which has gained considerable dissemination through continuous teacher education
The Historical Consciousness – Theories and Practices Projects coordinated by Isabel Barca made relevant contributions to this specific aspect of teacher education through workshops, MA dissertations and PhD theses
Summary
This article reports on the main results of a study that focused on how historical competencies were developed and assessed by teachers of Grade 7 to Grade 9 classes in Portugal. Despite efforts to disseminate a set of proposals grounded in history education research, the use of these proposals by teachers was limited by the dominance in the classroom of the transmission paradigm and an approach to assessment that centred on students’ recall and reproduction of content transmitted by teachers (Fernandes, 2011; Roldão, 2003) These models persist, even though new trends in research point out the possibility of improving students’ performance through tasks centred on cognitive competencies that should be assessed through observation of students-in-action and analysis of their metacognition (Alves and Machado, 2011; Roldão, 2003). The further aim of this research is to contribute to the improvement of teachers’ practices, in order to foster students’ historical thinking in ways that are consistent with their needs in temporal orientation, helping them to develop some sort of genuine historical consciousness that ‘ties the past to the present in a manner that bestows on present actuality a future perspective’ (Rüsen, 2004: 67)
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