School History Research Articles

Exploring Mixed Reality Board Games as an Innovative Educational Tool for Teaching History in Primary Schools

This study investigates the challenges of teaching history to primary school students and the endeavour to develop a board game, supported by educational apps and augmented reality, to enhance the learning experience. The initiative is in response to the New Zealand Ministry of Education's mandate that New Zealand's history must be taught in all Kura and schools' local curriculum from 2023. (Ministry of Education, 2023). The study was conducted in two phases. The first phase explored teachers' attitudes towards using technology as a teaching aid and the availability of digital devices for interactive teaching and learning. The results showed that many teachers are supportive of using board games and technology in their teaching. In the second phase, a board game was developed and trialled with a group of teachers and students as expert representatives for the target group. The results showed that the mixed reality board game has great potential and is well worth continued development. The study also suggests that emerging disruptive technologies such as mixed reality can create effective and engaging learning and teaching environments.

Иконописная школа «Ставрос» в деле возрождения церковной живописи

The aim of the work is to reveal the role of the Stavros icon painting school of the Udmurt Republic in revitalizing church painting. The paper examines the history of the Stavros icon painting school, the features of the education system in this icon painting school. The study is novel in that it is the first to shed light on the history of the exhibition activities of students and graduates of the icon painting school and to highlight their experience in the field of church painting. As a result of the study, it can be concluded that the head of the Stavros icon painting school V. N. Morozov managed to create, in fact, his own school-workshop, whose graduates successfully work for the temples of the Udmurt Republic and across Russia.

Communicative Activity: Social Theoretical Foundations for Critical Materialist Media and Communication Sociology in the Digital Age

This paper contributes to the social theoretical foundations of a sociology of media and communication by making use of the cultural–historical school in psychology. Such perspective gains relevance in digital capitalism and the blurring of production and Internet usage. The paper first revisits Habermas’s influential notion of communicative action and agency. Second, it uses activity theory as an alternative, more promising way of theorising because it links communication closer to work. A model of communicative action is introduced and a conceptual link between media and human tool use is established. Third, the paper elaborates on the notion of activity in the digital world and posits that digitalisation can be understood as a ‘machinisation’ of mental and communicative-coordinative work. The developed perspective, the paper concludes, allows critical media and communication sociology to operate with meaningful concepts of communicative expropriation, exploitation and alienation.

“It is like the re-enactment show”: Narrative and historical culture among young French Canadian students

This study of historical consciousness illustrates the cultural processes by which French Canadian students narrate the history of their national past. Findings are based on data collected through a narrative inquiry with 635 francophone students from a variety of backgrounds. Although participants made explicit references to and use of formal learning from their school history courses, a majority of participants produced simplified narratives largely informed by mythistories of their historical culture. These findings suggest that the current curricular emphasis on historical thinking may fail to challenge students’ historical ideas in ways that take into consideration the forces of historical culture (mythistories, mnemonic infrastructure representations, conceptions of the past) and help them generate more complex narratives of the collective past that acknowledge the diversity of perspectives present in the society in which they life.

Students' historicisation of the environmental crisis: A narrative of industrialisation, ignorance and greed

As the field of history education begins to acknowledge the need to respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene, questions arise concerning students' ability to use history to make sense of pressing environmental issues. To address this, 67 Swedish upper secondary school students were asked to historicise issues like global warming and share their ideas concerning the present and the future. Within the framework of Jörn Rüsen's narrative theory, this article analyses how and to what extent these students experienced and interpreted the past and used history to orient themselves in relation to such issues. It also develops on the outcome of this process. While most students historicised the situation, many students made limited use of history. Their typical narrative can be described as a linear story of historical industrialisation driven by the hunger for progression and wealth and facilitated by ignorance. It was told with little detail or reference to evidence and in a way that generally seemed unsupported by historical thinking. Moreover, their typical narrative mostly aligned with the standard science-based Anthropocene narrative, lacking cultural and political perspectives. Although their orientations varied, students focused on technical solutions and lifestyle adjustments rather than civic engagement and politics. Students were worried about the future. However, the narrative of technological and scientific progression and the belief that people in the past lacked awareness and technological alternatives gave students hope. On the other hand, viewing them as informed or inherently selfish contributed to pessimism. Supported by theoretical work, the findings indicate ways school history may support students' ability to deal with Anthropocene issues, helping them to experience and interpret the past and the present in a more nuanced and elaborate way. They also highlight the need for content that aids students' ability to anticipate Anthropocene scenarios and reflect on strategies for engagement.

Context matters in history textbook studies: A call to address the socio-political landscape of textbook production

History textbooks are a tool of nation-building and often the only account of particular events, people and issues to which students will be exposed. This is one reason why it is important to examine, not only their content, but the context of their production. Research attention needs to be directed not only at disentangling the logics of textbook content, a purpose that dominates the field, but also at the social and political contexts of their development, including their production (publishing and authorship) and the processes by which they receive official approval. This work analyzed 100 history textbook studies in order to identify current trends in textbook research. This article focuses on one of the four major findings of the study: textbook studies often focus on the content of the textbook in isolation from the socio-political landscape of textbook production. The socio-political landscape refers, but is not limited to, the influence of local and geopolitics; the influence of the state, evident primarily in the official approval processes employed by governments; the economic dimension and publication parameters; and authorship factors. Among the relatively few studies that address the socio-political landscape, the authors often employ a historiographical or comparative perspective. The historiographical perspective, which is dominant, offers an analysis of textbooks over time in order to reveal both continuities and changes in the historical narratives produced by their authors. One example is a study by Yeow Tong Chia (2013), who examines conceptions of ‘Chineseness’ and China in Ontario high school history curricula and textbooks in the post Second World War to the 1980s period. More broadly, the paper locates the Ontario textbooks in the international context of the western-centric perspectives that were prevalent following the Second World War. The comparative perspective analyzes textbooks across regions in one historical moment. For example, Jason Nicholls (2006) addresses the role of national contexts in determining how the Second World War is portrayed in textbooks found in the United States, Italy, Sweden, Japan, and England.

Analysis of History Textbooks: A Review of Michel Foucault's Power Relations Theory

History is known as a branch of science that studies human life in the past with its different dynamics and developments. The role of history in school is to provide students with an understanding of the ways of thinking and the processes involved in studying past events, and what is no less important to internalize national identity. Another form of historical writing in formal education is textbooks. Textbooks as one of the learning tools used in school must present historical facts that are truly objective and not only contain the interests of the government. The purpose of learning history is to evoke historical awareness in students so that they know their identity. Students must know their national identity as a whole, free from doctrines that contain political tendencies and must be taught to liberate their minds more broadly and liberate themselves to the complex and comprehensive construction of historical knowledge.
 Keywords: textbook, power relations, history learning, Michel Foucault

Digital-based Learning in Social Science Cluster Subjects in High School with Curriculum Merdeka

This study aims to evaluate digital-based learning in Social Sciences cluster subjects (sociology, geography, economics, history and civic education) in Senior High Schools with an independent curriculum. The research method used is descriptive with a quantitative approach. This descriptive research is used with the aim of knowing the value of independent variables without making comparisons or correlating with other variables. Data were collected through questionnaires developed based on key indicators of digital learning variables. The respondents of the study were teachers who taught social subjects and students who were taught. The results of the study found: The type of ICT used was 66.1%; the utilization rate of technology in learning is 82.6%; the level of student proficiency in the use of ICT technology is 73.4%; the level of teacher commitment to use ICT technology in learning is 76.1%; digital learning success rate is 77.0%. The teacher satisfaction rate was 74.9% and the student satisfaction rate was 88.8%. From this indicator data, it can be concluded that digital-based learning in social science cluster subjects in Senior High Schools in Makassar City is 77.0% or is in the very high category.
 Keywords: digital learning, social sciences

School Subjects: Photography as Source on Children’s Lives in the History of Colonial Boarding Schools

ABSTRACT Despite a visual turn in the field of history of education, including visual sources has far from become standard practice when writing histories of education or when considering children’s voices from the past. Yet photographs can be especially fruitful when considering marginalised children who left few traces in other records. Building upon theories and insights from multiple disciplines, this article aims to contribute to recent methodological approaches to researching the experiences of marginalised children. Through the preservation of bodies, actions, and movements in space and time, photography may provide access to the lives of children growing up in colonial boarding schools. From a case study of a school in Merauke, West Papua (Netherlands New Guinea) in the 1920s, three specific merits of photography as source in educational history are discussed, as well as the difficulties and limits of this approach.

Histories of educational technologies. Introducing the cultural and social dimensions of pedagogical objects

ABSTRACT At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Spanish scholars started to pay particular attention to the history of schools’ material culture, defining this as “etnohistoria de la escuela”. Reflections on the “materiality of schooling” and “school heritage” continued in the years that followed. Teaching tools or, more widely, “school objects” challenge the concepts of space, time and sociality. They speak of school practices, cultural history, and ideology. School artefacts are either handmade products created by pupils and teachers, or the school equipment that is made up of commercial products, which also respond to an industrial and economic logic, linked to the achievement of mass schooling. The aims and means of education are intermingled, but if educational theories have long attracted scholars’ attention, the history of educational objects can be further explored from different angles. This paper shows the connection between educational models and pedagogical tools, but also between ideology and the cultural dimension of pedagogical objects, and between economy and pedagogical artefacts. ISCHE 43 was dedicated to the histories of educational technologies and the articles in this special issue of Paedagogica Historica represent some of the leading papers presented at the conference, which was held for the first time as a hybrid event at the Catholic University of Milan from 31 August to 6 September 2022.

Triangulating Written and Oral Ego-Documents – Autobiographical Sources of Diocesan Pre-Seminary Pupils: Challenges and Opportunities

ABSTRACT In recent years, biographical interviews with former pupils have become important sources for boarding school history. This raises the question as to whether these retrospective sources can be combined with contemporary written material and how to go about that. This paper argues for a triangulation of written with oral sources and the related methods of historical biography research and reconstructive social research. The combination of data and methods turns boarding school history into an interdisciplinary project that poses new challenges for research. At the same time, it also offers a way to a deeper understanding of boarding school history and its long-term effects.

75 lat polskiej medycyny i farmacji we Wrocławiu (1945–2020). Wybrane elementy historii wrocławskich wyższych uczelni. Część trzecia

75 years of Polish medicine and pharmacy in Wrocław (1945–2020). Selected elements from the history of higher education in Wrocław. Part tree Professional training in medicine and pharmacy had begun in Wrocław by the fall of 1945. The Faculty of Medicine was created within the structure of Wrocław University and Wrocław University of Science and Technology. Two departments were established within it: the Pharmaceutical and Dentistry departments. In 1950, a specialized medical school was developed from the University, functioning briefl y under the name of the Medical Academy (which was changed to the Academy of Medicine), already with an independent Faculty of Pharmacy. In 1979, the Medical Analytics Department was established within the Faculty of Pharmacy (which ceased its activities in 2020). In 1978, the Faculty of Nursing was created which was transformed into the Faculty of Public Health in 2001 and into the Faculty of Health Sciences in 2008. Starting in 1989, the school was called the Academy of Medicine in Wrocław (Akademia Medyczna im. Piastów Śląskich). In 1992, the Post-Graduate Faculty of Medicine (existing until the academic year 2019/2020) was distinguished from the Faculty of Medicine. In 2000, the Department of Dentistry was transformed into the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. As a part of the school, liberal arts and social studies connected with medicine were also developed in units located within the structure of various departments of the AM. The Academy of Medicine in Wrocław existed until 2011 when the decision was made to transform it into Wrocław Medical University (Uniwersytet Medyczny im. Piastów Śląskich), functioning until now. The article presents the major stages in the history of medical schools in Wroclaw after 1945, taking into consideration the external factors that had an effect on the changes occurring in them. It also presents their results. It consists of three parts. The fi rst one presents the most important aspects of the history of the Faculty of Medicine of Wrocław University and Wroclaw University of Science and Technology in the years 1945–1949. The second part discusses the history of the Academy of Medicine in the years 1950– 2011, and the third one of Wrocław Medical University in the years 2011–2020. The article contains an extensive bibliography of studies concerning the history of these schools as well as the system of public medicine in Poland in the years 1945–2020, providing the context for their activities.

Historia escolar, regulación curricular y opinión pública: diálogos ausentes

En este artículo de reflexión se plantea un debate acerca del tratamiento que se ha dado en la opinión pública a la Ley 1874 del 2017, cuya expedición se llevó a cabo sin consultar la trayectoria de la investigación educativa y pedagógica acerca de la enseñanza de las ciencias sociales y de la historia. Inicialmente se presentan y analizan los argumentos desde los cuales se formuló y expidió la Ley 1874 del 2017 que busca restablecer la enseñanza obligatoria de la historia de Colombia. Posteriormente, se identifica la matriz discursiva dominante en la opinión pública, que ha reiterado la necesidad de convertir la enseñanza de la historia en una cátedra dentro del currículo oficial desde el supuesto de su desaparición en el escenario escolar. Luego se presentan los enfoques que se han configurado en el país con respecto a la investigación del área de ciencias sociales y de la historia, y desde este acumulado académico, se identifican las principales problemáticas que se deben abordar con el propósito de contribuir al fortalecimiento del área en el currículo escolar.

The Continued Absence of the LGBTIQA+ Community in School History Textbooks in Post-Apartheid South Africa

School history textbooks in South Africa are essential teaching and learning materials for most history teachers and learners, because they are often the only materials used to engage with the past. These textbooks are also considered to contribute to the construction of an ideal citizenry, as well as fostering national identity, unity, and reconciliation (Bertram and Wassermann 2015; Bam, Ntsebeza and Zinn 2018). However, our concern is that while textbooks appear to be used to construct an ideal citizenry who is supposed to have reconciled and united into one national identity, there also appears to be a concerted effort to exclude, within both the written and visual texts of the textbooks, those South Africans who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer/Questioning, Asexual, and many other identities (LGBTIQA+). Through abyssal and post-abyssal epistemology as our theoretical frameworks, and critical discourse analysis as our tool of analysis we were able to investigate how four history textbooks across four grades within the Senior and Further Education and Training phase that we purposively and conveniently sampled continue to exclude LGBTIQA+ contributions and experiences within the knowledge base of the school history curriculum, despite the pivotal role some played during the struggle against apartheid. We have since concluded that the erasure of the LGBTIQA+ community amounts to another dehumanising act against this group of people that is epistemic, existential, and ontological in nature. We also argue that this act denies all history teachers and learners, irrespective of their sexual orientations, the opportunity to engage with diverse historical contributions and experiences of all South Africans.

"Do you smoke?" - content and linguistic analysis of students' substance histories in simulated patient interviews.

The use of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs has considerable health consequences. Substance histories are often only incompletely taken in everyday clinical practice. When learning to take a medical history in medical school, one of the learning objectives is to inquire about consumption behavior. The aim of this exploratory study was therefore to examine the content and language of substance histories taken by medical students. From a simulation training of a first working day in hospital, 91 video films of medical histories were available, which advanced medical students had conducted with six patients with different consumer behavior. These interviews were verbatim transcribed and analyzed using content-structuring qualitative content analysis according to Kuckartz. For all substances, the reasons for the questions and the depth of the respective substance use were categorized and errors in the questions were examined. In addition, a linguistic analysis of the verbal ways in which the substances were inquired about was carried out. The students most frequently asked about smoking (73.3%). In only 15.4% of the interviews were all substances asked about, in none were all substances asked about completely. A total of 112 protocol questions and 21 occasion-related questions were identified. Logical errors and double questions were found. Most of the questions were asked in a factual manner. However, questions in the categories "evasive" and "stigmatizing" were also found. The content-related and linguistic deficits of medical students in the collection of substance histories identified in this study should be addressed in communication courses at an early stage of undergraduate medical studies.

A Review of Mirjam Galley, Building Communism and Policing Deviance in the Soviet Union: Residential Childcare, 1958–1991. Philadelphia, PA: Routledge, 2020, 240 pp.

Mirjam Galley’s monograph on the history of boarding schools in the USSR from 1958 to 1991 fills a significant gap in the historiography of Soviet boarding institutions. Prior to the publication of this book, there was no in-depth analysis and description of this phenomenon throughout the post-Stalin era. The monograph analyses the historical context which conditioned the project of boarding schools, reconstructs their routine, which the author describes as unchanged during thirty years, and uncovers the personal experiences of boarding school staff and charges. However, the author’s primary interests lie within the domain of management principles. While high officials postulated ideals of care and concern, the key features of these institutions were austere conditions, on the one hand, and the almost total indifference that officials and representatives of state institutions demonstrated towards the project of boarding schools and schoolchildren in particular, on the other hand. Galley outlines how the upbringing of future workers, which was advertised as a duty of the utmost importance, actually depended on the personal goodwill of bureaucrats as well as on the ability of boarding schools’ staff to present the paper results of their work in the best possible manner.

Preserving Jewish Identity Without Returning to the Ghetto: A Case Study of the École Maïmonide, France's First Jewish Secondary School, 1935–2022

ABSTRACT: This article analyzes the history of France's first Jewish secondary school: the École Maïmonide, from its founding in Paris in 1935 to the present day. With close to 1,500 pupils today, it has become one of France's largest Jewish schools. Born out of a fear that exclusive reliance on secular French public education could lead to the inexorable erosion of Jewish religious practice and culture in France, the École Maïmonide was designed to provide French Jews with a Jewish alternative to the State's lycées, where pupils could follow a solid Jewish studies program alongside a high-quality general studies syllabus. While such a project implied a degree of separation from mainstream French society, the École Maïmonide's founders remained committed to public education for the majority of Jewish youth and the full integration of their pupils into French society. Analyzing the ways in which these aspirations materialized in the school's day-to-day organization and how the balance between them evolved throughout its history, this case study seeks to further our understanding of the history of Jewish education in France as well as the evolution of the discourse on identity preservation within the French Jewish community.

João Vicente Martins e o ensino da leitura e da escrita para crianças no Brasil do século XIX

Abstract Based on an analysis of a school textbook produced by Joo Vicente Martins in 1854, this article aims to understand the history of schooling in Brazil in the second half of the nineteenth century, notably in the elements of teaching reading and writing to children. Martins launched himself into the publishing market with Cartilha de Leitura repentina, ou plágio do Método Castilho, in an attempt to bring together the ideals of two important forerunners of the debate about methods for teaching the mother tongue engaged with the universalization of elementary education: the Frenchman Joseph Jacotot and the Portuguese António Feliciano Castilho. Takins as a source, above all the periodical press and the productions of Castilho and Martins, the analysis carried out was organized around two main aspects: the biography of the latter author and the materiality of his textbook. It is concluded, that, although it announces the elaboration of a plagiarism of the Castilho method, the work undertaken by João Vicente Martins presented his ideals about the child schooling in the Brazilian context of clashes between techniques of teaching reading and writing in the nineteenth century.

Study on teaching documents belonging to historical school archives of Normal Schools. Argentina

Resumen Las Escuelas Normales de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires y del país poseen, en sus fondos documentales, valiosas tipologías específicas. El estudio y reflexión de estos documentos auspician el análisis de la tradición e innovación pedagógica que se diseñaron para la formación de maestros y para la implementación en sus departamentos de aplicación. La escritura de las historias institucionales reconocen las tramas del sistema educativo fundacional de nuestro país, interpelando las subjetividades en la educación de niños, jóvenes y adultos. La historiografía de la enseñanza de las diferentes áreas del conocimiento conformaron los antecedentes del curriculum escolar actual que los documentos pedagógicos didácticos nos permiten desandar.

On the Teaching Method of Ideological Politics in Junior Middle School History Course

On the Teaching Method of Ideological Politics in Junior Middle School History Course