Undervisning kring sambandet mellan det förflutna, samtiden och framtiden : En undersökning om undervisningsmetodens påverkan på elevers förmåga till historiemedvetande

Sammanfattning: There are many definitions of historical consciousness. This essay uses the definition where the focus is on the ability to see connections between past, present and future. The aim of the essay was to design two different teaching methods to use when teaching about historical consciousness and to explore how they affect the students’ performances at the examination. The analysis was also open to discuss in what way other factors can have affected the results of the experiment. For this reason, the study has an experimental design. Two classes where taught using two different teaching methods and were later tested on their ability to see and explain connections between past, present and future. The first method is the more traditional teaching method consisting of lectures and the other method is based on variation theory and consists mostly of group discussions. The experiment was done twice so that each class was able to try both teaching methods. The results showed that the teaching method does not affect the students’ performances to any great extent. It did show, though, that the more traditional teaching method could lead to greater variation in the contents of the students’ answers but to less variation between Rüsen’s four types of historical consciousness. Furthermore, the results showed that one of the other main factors that affect students’ performances could be the historical period that the students are working with and are tested on. However, these results would need further studies to confirm whether this is in fact the case.