Pedagogical innovations English version by Ricardo Martín Quiroga Olvera martinrijk@gmail.com

A pedagogical model for the teaching of History

An innovation experience for basic education in Mexico

Abstract. A model for History Education is presented here as an innovation experience for Basic Education in

Mexico. It is a component of a new learning-centred educational paradigm based on interaction with primary

sources, as opposed to expositive teaching; a paradigm that conceives learning as a counterintuitive process

based on contextualizing historical time and on the analysis of information through "second order concepts" and

the transfer of knowledge to historical re-enactment activities. Its methodological principles are situated

learning (DíazBarriga), non-linguistic representations (Marzano) and multimedia learning (Trepat&Rivero).

There is a 150-teaching-hour yearly planning in didactic sequences performing analytical schemes and

museology, as well as journalism and drama activities. The model defines a typology of school learning patterns

(autonomous, active, passive and random) in order to establish didactic management strategies. It has been in

use as of 2006 by student-teachers specializing in History at Escuela Normal Superior de México during their

practical learning sessions at a number of secondary schools in Mexico City.

Keywords. History Education, situated historical cognition, second order concepts, schematics, interaction with primary sources.

Table 1. Tra i ts and kinds of problems within socia l sciences (Pozo et al., 1998: 158)

Defining traits of problems within social disciplines

Types of problem activities in the teaching of social sciences

From a theoretical viewpoint, these are i l l -defined problems.

Multiple-cause explanation problems:

Identifying factors

Analyzing connection points

Assessing their defining extent

Investigation problems:

Task definition and development

Empirical verification of hypotheses(through fieldwork, statistical

analysis, surveys and source analysis)

Answers necessarily carry value options with them

Open ended tasks (debates, negotiations, decision making)

Intentional explanation problems (understanding through empathy)

Problems that have been mediatised by the sources of information

Problems related to information processing (mapping and graphing dexterity, image reading, text…)

Problems related to the interpretation and evaluation of information:

Getting explicit or explicit (inferred) information

Critical analysis and evaluation of information (sources and evidence)

New teaching, innovation and good

practices in the teaching of History

Didácticas de la Historia, (The teaching of

History,a series of manuals of pedagogical

guidelines) were predominant in the training

and updating of elementary education

teachers in Mexico –the last of them, written

by our colleague Jesús Nieto and published in

2001). They started off by revising the

theories of History, to then proceed to the

presentation of methods and techniques to

teach, to elaborate and use “teaching

resources”, and to evaluate the learning;

these included formats and examples to be

duplicated as “model lessons”. The generally

prescriptive tone of its postulates can be

exemplified by the following excerpt:

[…] the teaching of History must be

based upon the following conditions:

firstly, very simple issues must be

chosen for the very little children,

and those should be narrated in the

same fairy tale tone, with no

historical aspirations, but grouping

the events around a central

interesting and colourful character

(Tijerina, 1952: 152; italics are ours).

The complexity of current problems and

challenges for the teaching of History (as a

social science, Pozoet al. 1998, as exposed in

Table 1) went far beyond those prescriptions.

Therefore, New Teaching or Nuevas

Didácticas (Prats, 2011; Santiesteban y

Pagés, 2011; Feliu y Hernández, 2011)

integrate: a) theoretical as well as

methodological progress in History (Chartier,

2007); b) research outcomes –especially

those about learning progressions (Chapman,

2009 and 2011) and the learners’ history

culture (Barton, 2010a and 2010b), and c)

“innovation and good practice”. Prats (1997;

17) had already highlighted this renovation

process: “It’s about going beyond the

framework of what can be considered

educational innovation, towards a state that,

by blending theory and methodology, and

above all evaluation research, allowing for

conclusions that can be generalized or the

analysis of essential problems for the

preparation and implementation of the

teaching”.

It is within this context that our Model for

the Teaching of History (henceforth, “The

Model”)1 was conformed between 2006 and

2012 as a necessary mediation between

good practice and the innovation that

originated them, as an alternative with a

footing to confront the to-day prevailing

expository routines in the teaching of History

in Mexico. It is important to point out that

took as reference the pioneer research conducted by Dr. Frida DíazBarriga (1998).

The Model addresses the questions which

History to teach, to whom, how and when,

considering that courses are one year long

and, in Mexico’s case, History is taught in

three grades in elementary school and in two

in secondary. Due to its principles (use of

primary sources and an analytical concept of

History) and its similarities with pedagogical

museology, heritage education, scientific

education and other History related

extracurricular strategies, we call it History

Education. An attempt was made to

formalize the Model by confronting it with

the state of the art principles available on

the web (in Spanish, Catalonian, Portuguese,

Italian and English).

State of knowledge:

The new paradigm for the teaching of

History

A revision of the published documents on

the teaching of History (see Table 2) lets us

notice three kinds of innovations and good practice:

Table 2. State of the art principles for the teaching of His tory (2012)

Country New educational paradigm

England, Canada, Portugal and

Brazil

Second order concepts (Lee, Seixas) and situated historical cognition (Barca)

The USA Acts of thinking (Van Sledright), mental habits in History, Heuristics (Wineburg), and Bring History Home

Holland Historical reasoning (Van Boxtel), contextualization of historical time (Wilshcut), and Heritage Education

Italy Laboratories using primary sources (Borghi and Mattozzi)

France Problem situation (Dalongueville and Hubert)

Spain Heritage research education (Prats, Pagès, Santacana, Trepat, Estepa and Cuenca), multimedia learning (Rivero)

Research: History workshops and laboratories

analyzing primary sources (second order and

heuristic concepts), hypothesis testing, case

studies, micro history.

Psycho-pedagogical: conceptual change,

problem solving, project based learning,

procedural, and multimedia.

Sociocultural: heritage education, pedagogical

museology, scientific and artistic initiation, use

of narrative.

In these state of the art pedagogical principles, a

new paradigm for the teaching of History stands out, a paradigm that

prioritizes sensitive and rational interaction

with primary sources, going beyond uncritical

transmission of historiographical knowledge

sanctioned in curricula, manuals and other

“pedagogical resources”;

conceives History not just as mere stories or a

narrative, or a sociology about the past, but as

the recreation of the social subject’s becoming

through cultural as well as chronological time

(Wilschut, 2010: 6; ;Moradiellos, 2011) from

evidence, theories and research methods. And

in this sense, History is a causal for it cannot be

reduced to the application of general laws;

defines the learning of History as something

counterintuitive (an unnatural act), which

cannot, therefore, be performed through

“common sense”;

considers that the “all-in present” concept, the

anachronism and the “representations” of the

past –shared by teachers and students as

influenced by the media’s culture– together

with official historiographies constitute

obstacles for the understanding of historical

time (Carretero, 2011; VanSledrgith, 1998;

Wineburg, 2001);

specifies that the teaching of History requires

strategies to overcome initial representations

and “common sense”, so that historical time

can be understood (Dalongueville, 2003), this

comprehension being not only rational, but

sensitive, experiential and functional for each individual (Rüsen, 1994; Lee, 2004).

History Education is part of the new paradigm. It

resorts to the methodology of History in order for

the learners to develop a “situated cognition”

regarding the discipline and its need for temporal

orientation (“sense”). Learning is consequently a

process that starts with problemising initial

representations, moves on to the conceptual

analysis of information obtained as evidence, and

concludes with the functional integration (for

educational purposes) of the knowledge acquired

through historical re-enactment activities (Prats, SantacanaTrepat, 2011).

The discursive “History lesson” The total number of middle school students (12-15-

year olds) in Mexico is around six million, half of

which have four fifty-minute lessons a week –second and third grades– (SEP, 2011).

The lessons contents are divided into two yearly

courses, the first of which focuses on the teaching

of World History, while the second one does on the

Country’s,each course being divided into five

chronological “sections” that deal with five

historical periods going from the XVI to the XX

centuries. Likewise, each section is divided into

topics: a panoramic one, five to understand the

period, and two more for analysis and reflection.

Each topic is broken down into a number of subtopics and studied in one week, in an average.

Students are given a manual (a textbook) created by

a publishing house. In many of Mexico City’s schools

there are IT classrooms, with internet access or

some kind of encyclopedia. These resources,

however, are seldom used beyond the search for

information and don’t offer a better option than

that already at disposal with paper shops’

monographic illustrations.

Most History teachers come from Humanities

Schools, while only a minority come from Teachers’

schools (Normales), their SEP updating training

being generally scant. With part-time contracts (19

paid hrs.), they have to teach four different classes,

fulfil other school duties and turn in monthly

grades, which they must deliver to parents. They

are also responsible for keeping attendance and

assessment records (class participation, homework

handed in, quiz results).

A lesson usually starts by a “roll call” and “class

appeasement”, which typically consume at least the

first ten minutes of the lesson, after which the

teacher will make a topic-explaining speech,

supported by some image, a text or paragraph

dictation, question and answer sessions as well as

some class activity (a reading, copying from the

board, a questionnaire to answer) to conclude the

lesson with a brief revision of the topic taught.The

same routine will be applied to other classes, the

teacher then will meet parents who have been

given a school appointment due to behavior or

underachievement issues with their children; some

other school duties might have to be performed by

the teacher, so they will comply with the contract

hours (e.g. preparing the Honoring the National

Symbols ceremony regularly held on Mondays).The

students will in turn welcome any of the other six

teachers that deal with them every school day, and

put the History notebook back into the heavy bag

where they keep their school books and materials,

History being just one of the nine subjects in the

curriculum (together with Spanish, English,

Mathematics, Science, Technology, Civics and

Ethics, Physical Education and Arts) distributed

along the 45-hour school week, seven lessons a day.

Although standardized examinations (ENLACE) are

applied on a periodical basis, no such a thing has

been established for History yet: even when

consensus has it that the teaching of History is poor,

there is no standardized exam that proves it. It is

the teacher the one who establishes the criteria for

accrediting the subject, with traditional

questionnaires having lost weight in this subject’s

“grades”. Should a student fail the course, they can

still pass if they take a sixty-question“compensatory exam”.

Even when teachers are supposed to make an

annual planning that takes topics, activities,

resources and assessment criteria into

consideration, their teaching practice is basically

guided by the manual, or their own notes, together

with the topic’s materials, their own

“representations” and routines prevailing over their

academic and pedagogical knowledge, due to the

obsolete –even sometimes– nonexistent

“collegiate” work, insufficient updating and school management.

The contents are treated as stories (historical topic,

assessment, time and space placement, timeline,

characteristics, causes and results)of the “Bronze

History“, i.e. heroes and great events, or of the

“Critical history”, i.e. antiheroes (González, 1980:

61-67), so that students can only recall anecdotic

recounts or what the media or the “official culture”

spread.2 From the sources of our research, (Mora,

1999 and 2001), “scientific History” and

constructivist teaching approaches have not yet taken any roots in Mexico.

This discursive routine has variations; they

do not modify the scarce meaningfulness of the

contents, though. Even when students are keen on

learning History, their interest drops, which in turn

backfires on the teacher who ends up burnt out.

Under these conditions –observed in many a public

secondary school in Mexico City– changing class

routines in the History “lesson” proves really

difficult. Good practices and innovation remain

limited to those proficient teachers working in a

favorable school context, teachers with

postgraduate studies and some “practicing” (in-training) teachers.

From good practices and innovation to a

model for the teaching of History.

Student teachers who have to do their “practical

training” (four to eight sessions per semester) and

their “teaching training” (five sixteen-session

journeys with three different classes through the

school year) have to deal with their teen-students’

apathy. That’s why they have to be as creative as it

can get, many of them resorting to visual,

audiovisual and IT resources, as well as active and

playful strategies to try and foster an interest in History.

In our role of in-training teachers’ advisors since

2003, we have been able to systematize the good

interaction practices with primary sources through

sequenced workshops (“multiple intelligences”,

museology, journalism and dramatization) and a

“final” project aimed at integrating all the acquired

knowledge. Then we found their theoretical

foundations in pedagogical museology (Orozco,

2005), heritage education (Cuenca and Estepa, 2005), as well as scientific and artistic initiation.

As a result of these good practices, interest in and

knowledge of the subject increased. “Gastronomy

as a teaching strategy” (Emba, 2010) brought out in

a secondary school with underachieving and at-risk

students (bullying, addictions and high drop-out

rates)turned out to be a great success, not only in as

far as getting to know the History of Mexico is

concerned, but in fostering the students’ cultural

identity, in integrating knowledge from other

subjects, and in provoking changes in the students’

eating habits at school.Games, genealogical box,

fashion, music, images, the five senses, multiple

intelligences, and graphic organizers proved equally successful as interactive strategies.

Departing from the narrative lesson –which in the

teachers’ discourse mixes up relevance,

interpretation and information–was the single most

important obstacle in overcoming expository

teaching. We also discarded the use of manuals, for

they normally keep the aforementioned mix up, and

started using primary sources for theme

introductory activities (“opening”), information

analysis (“development”) and evaluation (“closing”)

thus conforming an “interactive lesson”. We then

introduced schemes –one of the non-linguistic

representations recommended by Marzano (2000)–

chosen on the basis of the prevailing historical

information on the studied topic: monographic

(radial and tree), chronological (process and

episode) as well as analytical (Dalongeville,

Alvermann, Gowin, Ishikawa, Venn, Cooper). We

avoided using time lines and concept maps, as they

represented nothing new to the students, and mind

maps due to the difficulty inherent to their

evaluation. Table 3 shows a schematic progression of all those activities.

The schemes depart from a central question about

the topic to be studied (see Table 4.): what, how, or

why. Their objective is for the students to tell the

difference between information and interpretation,

thus deconstructing the confusing school discourse.

This way, students were not just memorizing and

retelling stories, but they were able to evaluate and

reconstruct them as heuristic and as algorithms (Bueno, 2005; Carretero and López, 2009).

Table 3. Activi ty progress ion in a yearly Secondary course

fol lowing the MTH

Bimestrial block

Procedural lesson with schemes

Cooperative workshop

I. XVI – XVII

Centuries

Knowledge Multiple

Intell igences

II. XVIII

Century

Knowledge Museology

III. XIX

Century

Practice Journalism

IV. XX

Century

Practice Dramatization

V. XX

Century

(final years)

Application Integrating project

The schemes allow the teacher to select enough

textual and iconic information, thus avoiding an

excess in their discourse; they also allow the

teacher to doseprocedural difficulties to be faced by

the learners (knowledge, practice, application).

Three scheme formats are elaborated per topic:

historical contents are integrated in the

“informative” one; sequential times, activities,

resources, inductive questions as well as

assessment criteria (algorithms or hypotheses) are

included in the “teaching” one, whereas answer

gaps and, if necessary, the corresponding information are included in the “learning” one.

As the scheme may vary according to the session

and the difficulty level can be adjusted, itenablesa

learner customized learning, and awell-organized

and "decent” teacher’s presentation, making this

strategy a highly successful one (Ochoa, 2011), with

schematics being the first innovation consolidated in our model.

Table 4.Scheme, typology, cue question

Scheme Type Cue

question

Answer

type

radial monographic what? algorithmic

tree monographic what? Algorithmic

Venn (change

and continuity

monographic

process chronological how? Algorithmic

episode chronological how? Algorithmic

inference

levels (Cooper)

analytical Heuristic

spine

(Ishikawa)

analytical why? Heuristic

dilemma

(Alvermann)

analytical why? Heuristic

V (Gowin) analytical why? Heuristic

conceptual

change

analytical Heuristic

relevance analytical why? Heuristic

study case

(Dalongueville)

analytical why? Heuristic

Now, even when The Model will help overcome the

learners’ lack of interest, new trouble emerging in

each session or lesson –due to a number of social

and school factors– lead us to create a “school

learning matrix”, which we defined as the

conjunction of knowledge, skills, study habits and

learners’ attitudes in the classroom (Gaeta et al., 2012). We found four basic types

Autonomous: school learning is considered

important, and the learners exercise their skills

to achieve it, which can be immediately

noticed in their notebooks.

Active: some of the learners’ skills distract

them from school learning, and they’re only

interested in their hobbies.

Passive: learner’s knowledgeis scarce and study

habits are poor; so are their reading skills.

Disorganized: learner’s behavior is

incompatible with school learning, knowledge and study habits are very poor.

Table 5.Type of School Learning Matrix, Environment

management strategy and Level of Mastery

Type ofmatrix Environment

strategy

Level of

mastery

Autonomous Challenging and autonomous

Practice and application

Active Negotiation and contracts

Practice

Passive Controlled activities Knowledge

Disorganized Rules and stimuli Knowledge

The learning matrixes can be defined through

notebook checking, in-class behavior observation,

the school’s files, as well as student’s, teacher’s and

even parents’ interviews. We set apart from this

classification those students requiring special

program adaptations due to their particular needs.

The matrix is not permanent, but it is stable and

modifiable through the teacher’s intervention;

above all, it allows teachers to define atmosphere managing strategies and procedure mastery levels.

The use of these matrixes, accompanied by the

corresponding managing strategies is the second

innovative contribution of our model, put to the

test in school practice sessions.Finding theoretical

support has been rather complicated due to the

lack of research on the topic, Huber (2004) being the only one who has done some.

The last reform to Mexico’s basic education system

(RIEB) brought the Curricular Standards approach to

the country as a substitute to the Competencies

one, with a number of “expected learnings” having

provisionally been defined for the teaching of

History (SEP, 2011). In our role of members of the

History teaching community of Normal schools in

Mexico, we had a debate about which methodology

would best go with this change, and decided that

“second order concepts” (relevance, change, cause,

evidence, empathy and synthesis) would be the

best option, even when their application requires

some adaptation to the Mexican context, very

different from the English-speaking one, where this

methodology has had a larger development,

especially in regard to the “progression” used to

assess them and the “historically situated cognition”

we’re aiming at by implementing the Model (Teté Ramos, 2012: pg. 228).3

We see History in basic education as a functional

and orienting knowledge, involving rational

(causality, evidence, synthesis) and ethical

(meaningfulness) procedures, as well as experiential

knowledge (empathy) achieved through interaction

with primary sources and community situated

historical re-enactment (a transference similar to

that of heritage education, HEREDUC). In this sense,

we are incorporating second order concepts, as a third innovation in the Model.

Table 6.Expected learnings in History and Second order

concepts

Expected learning verb Second order concept

value relevance

locate, describe, identify change

explain cause

research evidence

research everyday life empathy

It was little by little that the Model (Mora y Ortiz

Paz, 2007, 2011, 2012a) took shape, as we

incorporated the results of research on the teaching

of History, innovations (schematics, second order

concepts, school learning matrix) as well as good

teaching practices (museology, journalism and re-

enactments). The Model does not pretend to

become a Teaching System, its application having

been just case based: in just but a few public

secondary schools in Mexico City in the last six

years. But precisely this duration has made it go

beyond the “proposal” level to become “situated teaching” (DíazBarriga, 2006) for an annual course.

The problem of understanding Historical

time.

Ari Wilschut4 (2009 and 2012) has already pointed

out how difficult understanding Historical time can

be, not just for our students but for the average

citizen, historians included. He starts by underlying

the fact that our notion of experienced historical

time very seldom goes beyond five generations, and

he goes on to propose frameworks, such as

biographies and stereotypes, that will allow the

learners to get a first approach that enables them to study of history.

Virtual realities achieved through films, docu-

mentaries, video games and 3D images have been

the most successful means of conveying the notion

of another (perceived) historical time, which, let’s

not forget it, is not just chronological but cultural as

well. Secondly, there are primary sources we can

resort to: museums and historical sites, as well as

re-enactments on special dates. And in a third

place, there is journalism, historical literature and

other art recreations of the past (music, paint,

sculpture). These means by themselves, however,

don’t lead to understanding historical time, this

being a cognitive operation by which experienced

and perceived time becomes “conceived time”

(Trepat y comes, 1998).

As a matter of fact, we fostered the conformation of

“historical thinking” (Santiesteban, González y

Pagès, 2009) during the “interactive lessons”

through empathetic openness followed by a

procedural activity centred in solving a conceptual

problem by means of a scheme which would make

it possible for the learners to elaborate either

evidence supported answers (algorithm) or

inference supported ones (heuristics), this sensible

and rational knowledge to be used (transfer) during

the “cooperative workshops” and the final

“project”, with which they’ll present a functional

recreation of the past to their community.

Table 6. A comparison of the Model for the Teaching of History

Passive Teaching Constructivism Model

What

(History) to teach

Curricula, teacher’s -

manuals or teacher “authorized historical knowledge”

Conceptual, procedural and

attitudinal contents

Contextualization of historical time

through primary sources; analysis through “second order” concepts (historically situated cognition)

To whom Learners predisposed to

memorization

Learners with previous knowledge Learners with “representations” of the

past and a series of school learning matrices

How Teacher’s lectures, readings, summaries, questionnaires and

homework

Cognitive strategies, problem solving activities, projects

Interacting with historical sources, schemes, “situated” historical re-enactment

When Every single lesson During demonstrative, practical and applicative teaching sequences

In five modules (interactive lessons, workshops and projects) sequenced on the basis of learning dimensions

History Education arises from questioning

familiarity with historical time (there’s nothing new

under the sun). Interaction with primary sources

requires achieving meaningfulness as “mnemic

imprint” (a sensory experience registered in our

long term memory) and “empathetic shock”, in

terms of agreeable, disagreeable or strange contact

with another culture (“past is a foreign land”).

These will depend on the plasticity of their culture

before change (rejection or acceptance) and can be

achieved by means of a “pedagogical situation”

through which learners confront their senses,

feelings and values with a primary source we call

“the context” in so far as it has a perceptible

“feeling” (affective, ethic, aesthetic) for the

learners. This operation is similar to that of

preservation performed by the museographer, and proves therefore difficult for teachers.

When we take into account psychological and

cultural tensions faced by the learners, together

with those natural to adolescence (Ubieto, 2007),

then “somatic” and “romantic” understanding

pointed out by Kieran Egan (2000), are dominant

upon the “philosophical” one, which is the one

searched for with the teaching. Hence the use of

our senses to get to know everyday life in the past

as a necessary bridge to get to know the minds (feelings and values) upon which historical subjects

took actions that we are judging in the present (“we

are more intelligent than our predecessors”).

Understanding the mindset of an age is a spon-

taneous “insight” generated by the unexpectedness

of the sensitive contact with the contextualizing

source, which overcomes presentism and achieves empathy.

Of course, this empathetical experience cannot

always be achieved. It takes each learner’s own

process, together with the design of a number of

interactive paths through the school year, apart

from knowing how to handle the emotional risk

implied by the a-didactic situation (the unforeseen

learner’s reaction), even if those of reality are more

relevant in our school life (poverty, insecurity). In

this case, History generates values for resilience and

transformation (Barros, 2007).

The following table shows a summary of the main

stages for designing a pedagogical sequence according to the Model.

Table 7. Design of a pedagogical sequence within the

Model for History Education

Stage Second order concept

1 Diagnosing the class according to the school learning matrix.

2 Transforming expected learning of the topic into

3 Defining the group’s level of procedural mastery (knowledge, practical know how)

4 Writing up the problem-creating question

5 Choosing the scheme to be developed

through the use of information sources

6 Designing the opening activity (sensitization

through contextualizing sources)

7 Specifying the assessment criteria (algorithmic or heuristic response)

A formative model for Historical education

The question of how to train History teachers for

Secondary Education has been addressed to

through the use of the artisans’ paradigm (tutored

and assessed teaching observation and practice) as

indicated in the current curriculum for secondary

school teachers (Plan de Licenciatura en Educación

Secundaria, 1999), over the practical-theoretical

paradigm of the previous curricula (1959, 1983). If

good teaching practices were predominant, the

artisans’ paradigm would yield very good results.

This not being the case, transmission routines –even

in teacher training rooms–reinforce the

representations in-training teachers have about the

teaching of History, which explains the survival of

the expository technique (the “Cathedra”) and its

hegemony within teachers’ practice, together with

its negative consequences, which brought us, in-

training teachers’ counsellors, to the creation of an

alternative pedagogical model in the first place.

And the Model lead us into the formative

counterpart (Mora y Ortiz Paz, 2010 and 2012b) in

accordance with its principles of interacting with

primary sources, overcoming our learners’ teaching

representations, as well as the application of

common sense to our explanations of the past (our

student teachers have no previous formal studies in

History).

So we applied the training model as a parallel

curriculum through modular contents (History,

Pedagogical Theory and Teaching Practice) for the

series of subjects (one per semester III-VIII) that

make our students practice teaching skills. We first

sensitized the students through primary sources

and their reflections on their pedagogical

representations. We then tried out the model in the

teacher-school’s classrooms as well as in the

teaching practices, especially in the “interactive”

lesson. Finally, we solved practical problems of

teachers under real work conditions. In the last year

we were able not only to develop professional skills,

but also to generate new knowledge that we

incorporated to our Model: particularly, the

principles of multimedia learning (Trepat y rivero,

2010) and the teaching methodology for second order concepts (Palomino, 2012).

We may conclude that the artisan’s paradigm for

teacher training keeps being impractical in Mexico,

just as the theoretical-practical ones have been

(Academical History Studies and then their

corresponding pedagogy). Under the magnifying

glass are Training by Competencies and Reflective

Teaching, which do not seem to have overcome the

difficulties. Our Model, on the other hand, is similar

to pedagogical Museology Training, Initiation to

Sciences and Heritage Education, as paradigms that

have yielded better educational results.

Discussing the outcome We took our Model to a number of communities,

and enriched it with the comments that came up

through its being presented and discussed. We’ve

also been fortunate enough to count on the support

of distinguished colleagues from Spain, England,

Holland and Brazil, particularly our translator to

Portuguese, who has described the Model as a

bridge between Constructivism and “History

Education”, stressing the use of schemes and

second order concepts in order to reach situated

historical cognition (Teté Ramos, 20155).

Indeed, even when not properly discussed, the crisis

of Constructivism in the teaching of History has

been manifest in diverse and complex ways. Despite

the abundant and rich literature generated by the

“second order concepts”, Shemilt (2011, p. 107)

stresses that they have not been systematically

taught or planned for the long term, due to which

their learning outcomes (their progression) are

rather uneven.

Despite their popularity, educational methods

based only on entertaining (edutainment)cannot

overcome the teenage learners’ representations of

the past, so that the bridge between Constructivism

and “History Education” turns out to be –for the

time being– essential for the development of

historical thought. In this context, transforming the

assessment of historical learning turns out essential.

Those sophisticated studies on progression

centered on conceptual knowledge need –in our

viewpoint– to integrate the “sensitive”

(experiential)knowledge to the subjective one

(values, attitudes and feelings), which form the

basis of historical culture.

Historical knowledge is necessarily different within

each social layer and conforms “memories” that

become antagonists due to social conflict and

globalization’s tendency to take unusual

restructuring paths (Pagès y González, 2009).

Historical teaching aims to overcome indoctrination

by means of dialogue and understanding, rather

than by denial of “the other” (Campillo, 2006).In

Mexico for the time being, this teaching style is but

an innovation trying to make its way into the

teachers’ training circles6 and, above all, into the school life of millions of teenagers.

The Model represents a successful innovation in the

teaching of History in basic education having been

implemented in some secondary schools in Mexico

City since 2006. A partial proof of this impact can be

observed in the final reports on their teaching work

written by the student teachers we did counselling

for. However, a formal assessment specifying the Historical learning achieved is still required.

Notes

1See some evidence of this at

http://aprendizajehistoriaensm.blogspot.mx

2 In Mexico the civic holidays are as follows: 5 th February,

Promulgation of the 1917 Constitution; 21 st March,

President Benito Juarez’ Birthday (1806); 5 th May, Gen.

Ignacio Zaragoza’s victory over the French invading

troops (1862); 16th September, the “call” for

Independence (1810); 20th November, the start of the

Revolutionary War (1910).

3 ”researchers in the field of the teaching of History use

the term “historically situated cognition” instead of

“situated competency”, both expressions meaning that

the learning of history involves cognitive operations,

“skil ls” that are specific to historical reasoning. See

Schmidt, M. A., Cogniçao histórica situada: que

aprendizagem é esta? In: Barca, I.; Schimdt, M.A.

Aprender história: perspectiva da Educaçao Histórica.

Ijuí: Editora Unijuí, 2009.

4 “I appreciate the fact that you have understood that

thinking and reasoning about time in a specific historical

way is essential to studying History. I believe you be right

in thinking that I might be the only one that stresses that

aspect. Personal communication, 21st August, 2012.

5 <<Gerardo Mora and Rosa Paz [ ] are proposing a

model for the teaching of History patterned as an

interface between History Teaching and

Constructivism. These authors consider the

construction of “second order concepts” essential

for “historically situated cognition” and include in

this construction work with “concept maps”.>>

6 Like those of the Masters in History Teaching at

CAM Zacatecas (Spanish initials of Teacher Updating

Centre), the Diploma course in History Teaching at

ENSM, two subjects in the curriculum for the

Bachelor’s degree in Basic Pre-school and

Education, as well as the on-line curriculum for the Teaching of History in Primary Education