Present-day lessons in history in final classes of secondary schools in South Tyrol/Italy

Author(s):

Norbert Parschalk

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

27. Didactics - Learning and Teaching

Format:

Paper

Session Information

27 SES 11 D, Issues in the Humanities

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-30

16:45-18:15

Room:

NIG, HS 2i

Chair:

Jens Dolin

Contribution

The research analyses the current lessons in history in the final classes of German language secondary schools in South Tyrol. Starting with an analysis of the content that is required by law, the main focus is directed on implementation. The first part of the research consists of the analysis of the Italian school system: i.e. the topics of the curriculum coming from the capital Rome and the provincial capital Bolzano, the annual program which every single teacher formulates at the begin of the school year und their final reports are analyzed and compared. The second part consists of the analysis of the different schoolbooks and other media that are used in the 29 German language secondary school in South Tyrol. This is necessary because South Tyrolean schools do not have their own media. Therefore they use books and other teaching materials from Germany and Austria that obviously are not always able to satisfy the demands of the Italian curricula. The research is based on a detailed theoretical discussion of topics like identity, historical awareness and curriculum research.

Method

- comparison and analysis of curricula in Germany, Austria and Italy - comparison and analysis of the annual programme of every single teacher (school year 2006/2007) - analysis (content, structure, composition and layout) of 12 different books that are used in 29 different schools - comparison of the German and Austrian school books with Italian school books - listing all the different teaching materials and media which were used from the teachers from 2006 until the present - interviews with teachers

Expected Outcomes

The first aim of this research consists to show through facts the complicated present-day situation of lessons in history. German secondary schools in South Tyrol can be seen as a meeting point of two different learning systems: the "Italian-encyclopedic-system" and the "German-empirical-system". This research is a clear field not only to analyse the differences, but also to get over them and to find new ways of Eurpean cooperation. It's high time to reform current lessons in history that still too much are focused on the national history. The combination between local, national, European history and world history has to be defined in a new way. This research can make a contribution to this important challenge of the future.

References

Magne Angvik/Bodo v. Borries: YOUTH an HISTORY. A Comparative European Survey on Historical Consciousness and Political Attidudes among Adolescents, Hamburg 1997. Horst Bartnitzky Horst/Wolfgang Böttcher: Lehrerarbeit und Curriculumentwicklung, München 2002. Siegfried Baur: La pedagogia e le sfide della pluralitá nella società postmoderna, Trento 2008. Klaus Bergmann u.a. (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Geschichtsdidaktik, Seelze-Velber 1997. Hans Döbert u.a. (Hrsg.): Die Schulsysteme Europas, Baltmannsweiler 2004. Gisbert Gemein: Deutscher, französischer und italienischer Geschichtsunterricht aus der Sicht der anderen, in: Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 49, 1998/4, 223-237. Jason Nicholls (ed.): School Histrory Textbooks across Cultures: international debates and perspectives, Cambridge 2006. Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas, Sam Wineburg (ed.): Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History, New York, London 2000.

Author Information

Norbert Parschalk

University Bozen/Brixen

Brixen

104

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