Historiska källor på mellanstadiet : En studie om hur historielärare samtalar om och arbetar med källor i historieundervisningen

Sammanfattning: The encounter with historical artifacts can spark historical questions and create a connection to the past, arousing curiosity and a desire to understand the historical context. This power can be harnessed in history education, where learning to question, interpret, and use historical sources is essential to developing historical literacy. This process not only contributes to understanding what knowledge in history is, but also to building a historical frame of reference and establishing historical concepts. Practicing source interpretation can also qualify students' historical consciousness. Research has shown that while teaching students how to handle historical sources and teaching source criticism skills is valuable, it may not necessarily lead to the development of historical disciplinary skills. This can result in a relative lack of skills among students in managing sources in a disciplinary way. Historical disciplinary skills involve the specific techniques and methods used by historians to analyze and interpret historical sources. This includes understanding the context in which the sources were created, identifying bias and perspective, and using a variety of sources to form a comprehensive understanding of the past. While source criticism skills are important, it is also important to focus on developing students' historical disciplinary skills to ensure that they have a deep and well-rounded understanding of history. This may involve incorporating more advanced historical methods and techniques into the curriculum and providing opportunities for students to practice these skills in a variety of contexts. This study aims to investigate history teachers' use of historical sources and their methodology for teaching based on these. Through interviews with primary school teachers in grades 4-6, the study explores the teachers' views on historical sources and their challenges and opportunities in teaching. The results of this study confirm certain aspects of previous research while also contributing new knowledge. By focusing on teachers' descriptions of their teaching methods and their views on historical sources, the study emphasizes the importance of source-critical criteria, structured source exercises, and the teacher's own historical perspective in teaching. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of how history teachers perceive historical sources, how these should be handled, and how they describe the implementation of their practical teaching. Previous research has either been action-based or has examined source handling at a broad level. This study contributes new insights that deepen and nuance existing knowledge about history teachers' handling of sources.