Concepts and skills in today's history classrooms

A lot of people still think that history is just the mere cramming of dates and facts, which have to be studied by heart at school. History, apart from creating an awareness of what happened in the past, can help students to develop the skills and concepts needed in everyday life. Luckily in today's Maltese history classes more importance is being given to skills and concepts, rather than to just dates and facts as was done before. Teaching history just through facts and dates will reduce the subject to a boring exercise.

Concepts and skills are rather complex to define. Both can be divided into two aspects. Concepts can be either specifically historical, such as "feudalism", "nationalism" and "democracy", or procedural. The latter include the concept of time, evidence, cause and effect, continuity and change, and similarity and difference. In history lessons students need the general skills of vocabulary acquisition, reference skills, memorisation, comprehension, analysis, extrapolation, judgement, and evaluation. There are also specific historical skills that students need to acquire such as the ability to use chronological evidence and historical evidence and also the capability to empathise with the people in the past.

Skills and concepts cannot be taught at the expense of knowledge. This is realised by our history teachers. Concepts, skills and content complement each other. If any one of them is missing, the student will not get a proper idea of history. Today it is useless to give a lot of emphasis to content, as students can easily find the facts on the internet and from other sources. However, the Maltese situation does not really permit this, as the syllabus is really vast. In five years of secondary school the present syllabus has to cover the whole period from prehistoric times to 20th century Malta, and all this with just one or two lessons per week. This turns history into a race with time, a feat which is quite difficult to win. Teachers need to accelerate in their output as the exams approach. Various teachers point out that exam papers, especially those of the SEC examination, are full of details. This restrains them from teaching history using skills and concepts.

Empathy

One of the objectives for Form 1 and Form 2 is to imagine themselves living at that time. The importance of empathy in history teaching arose with the advance of the "new history" approach. Cairns claims that empathy is not just a form of imaginative reconstruction but the act of one individual putting himself or herself, consciously or subconsciously, in the place of someone else, which often requires thought and reflection to be of any value.

This is surely not an easy task for students. Various factors hinder them from achieving real empathy. Empathy requires a high level of thinking and therefore it needs time to be achieved. Teachers claim that there is no real effective time during the lessons for students to empathise, although they are given the opportunity to do so. Another limitation is age as, for example, Form 1 students find it very difficult to empathise with people in the Temple period.

A frequently used method in our classes is the "Imagine you were..." exercise. This type of exercise may tend to be overused. The mentioned method leads to pupils' responses that are limited to statements which reflect common feelings, a transmission of everyday experiences and emotions into the past but lacking any real historical substance. A better strategy dealing with empathy is discussion in class. Students can compare their ideas and perspectives and reach a better level of empathy. This can lead to motivate and stimulate the students to learn about the past. Sources, especially primary sources, pictures, videos and re-enactments can be used to stimulate the students' imagination. Drama and role-plays can help the students to get in another person's shoes. Empathy can also be achieved through historical visits.

In spite of all these methods, empathy is not an easy task for both students and teachers. It has to be "rooted in evidence" and not just based on imagination. Teachers must be careful to give the proper background information, thus setting the historical scene in its proper context.

Concept of time

The concept of time has a central place in the development of a child's historical understanding. Part of the function of school history should be to give pupils some understanding of time and chronology. Without the concept of time, students cannot have real understanding of other concepts in history such as change and continuity, causation and consequences, development, and progression and regression. In the past the main feature of history teaching was the memorisation of dates. Unfortunately, this was still the case in Maltese secondary classrooms until a few years ago. Students still frequently ask questions like "Are dates important?" or "Shall we study these dates by heart?" Fortunately, this trend is beginning to change and the great emphasis on dates is decreasing. An experienced teacher stated that: "Well, on talking about myself, I used to give a lot of importance to dates because I considered them to be very important. But nowadays I have realised that too many, will make the History lesson somewhat boring. And we tend to make the students feel confused. So I try to lessen the importance on dates ..."

One of the aims of the history syllabus is that students should develop a clear idea of chronology. It is the sequencing of events. Teachers are using time-lines, time tunnels (going backwards in time from the present), and visual aids, to teach chronology. It is important to present time well since it is something abstract for the students.

An international conference

Euroclio, the European Standing Conference Of History Teacher's Associations, together with the Malta History Teachers' Association are planning to organise a European conference on skills and concepts in history teaching on March 20-26. The aim of the conference is to discuss and explore how skills and concepts can be used to promote an awareness of European citizenship. History teachers are invited to attend. Further information can be achieved by visiting the website www.eurocliohistory.org.

Mr Zahra, B. Ed (Hons), is the PRO of the History Teachers' Association (Malta).