Teaching to think about the future by teaching and learning historical time

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate the representations that have built future primary education teachers, in reference to teaching and learning of historical time. To do this, we analyze an activity proposed in the course of Social Sciences Didactics, in which students of teachers had to design a didactic proposal to teach historical time. The results show that there is a change in the methodologies and didactic strategies that they apply. However, in most of the proposals, a teaching of historical time predominates, which is fundamentally related to the chronology and study of the past. With a smaller percentage, proposals were found that contemplate the relationship between past and present, and very few proposals incorporated strategies for students to learn to think about the future. The results show what the revised research has already indicated to us, the teaching of history remains anchored in teaching practices with little impact on the development of historical consciousness to place the student in the world in which he lives, to become aware of responsibility for the problems of his present and to think forward.