The historical past och the practical past: Om ett utvecklat lärande i historia på gymnasie- och högskolenivå

Abstract

In the spring of 2018 a study by Stefan Sellbjer at Linnaeus University showed on one hand that several professors did not believe they could meet the school's knowledge requirements in their own subjects. Parents, on the other hand, thought that the knowledge requirements were so abstract and complex that they could no longer question their children about the homework. The purpose of this study is to provide a theory-testing and tentative explanation of the professors’ and parents’ experiences with the help of interviews. How do teachers in history view the relevance of the subject of history and its goals? A hypothesis, that is confirmed in the interviews, is that teachers at the university level to a greater extent describe the relevance of the history subject in terms of the historical past and that the teachers at the upper secondary level to a greater extent describe the relevance of the history subject in terms of the practical past. The teachers’ answers can be described in terms of four different learning processes. According to both upper secondary school and university teachers, knowing history is about something qualitatively different from learning about history. A hybrid form of learning history in history can be discerned in the upper secondary school teachers’ answers: that a developed learning is about learning history in the present.