Diseño y evaluación de unidades formativas para la enseñanza de competencias de pensamiento histórico en educación secundaria

Abstract

This doctoral thesis is a compendium of publications whose main objective is to validate and evaluate training units designed and implemented from a training programme aimed at students of the master’s degree in Teacher Training specialising in Geography and History. The evaluation aims to determine their effectiveness in improving the teaching-learning process of historical thinking skills in secondary education, through active methods, which will enable students to become critical citizens. For this purpose, evaluative research with a mixed explanatory approach and a quasi-experimental A-B design is undertaken. Both quantitative techniques have been applied for the data collected through the questionnaires, and qualitative techniques for the information obtained through a focus group and interviews. In addition, an observational methodology was used to collect data on the methodology for teaching historical thinking skills. The research design is structured in three phases from which the three articles of the compendium and a complementary publication are derived. Phase 1 focuses on the design and implementation of a training programme to guide the development of training units that promote historical thinking through active teaching methods. Phase 2 focuses on the validation of data collection instruments and training units. Finally, phase 3 is aimed at the evaluation of the training units, taking into account the following variables: methodology, motivation, satisfaction, learning and teaching discourse. The quantitative results obtained indicated that in the repeated measures analysis of variance, significant differences of medium effect were found in the pre and post phase factor in learning and satisfaction (ηp2 = .12 and .13), and of large effect in methodology and motivation (ηp2 = .26 and .144). As for the gender factor, significant small-effect differences were found in motivation (ηp2 = .026), with higher values for women. Significant small effect differences were also found in the post-test in terms of satisfaction and motivation (ηp2 = .06 and .04). On the other hand, quite positive statements from both master's students and high school students and teachers are striking, while the observations show a predominance of historical contextualisation discourse, to the detriment of activities that promote critical historical thinking. It also revealed significant relationships between interpretative discourse and active methodologies, between historical contextualisation and the use of sources, as well as a mutually inhibiting relationship between the exploration of prior knowledge and the development of historical thinking skills, and a mutually activating relationship between interpretation and historical thinking. Finally, after a discussion with the specific literature on history teaching in secondary education, it is concluded that the strong point of this research is the novel methodology used, observation being rarely used in history teaching, especially with a mixed model such as the one in this research, which can be useful for teacher training. The training programme implemented, which resulted in the training units, has been highly effective in the variables that have been taken into account, even so, the research has some limitations such as the small number of classes and participants, the regionality and specificity of the study, difficulties at the time of implementation, and time constraints to carry it out. Possible avenues for future research include exploring the interaction between the activation of prior knowledge and the development of historical thinking and replicating this study at other educational levels.