De Paepe, Tom

Conceptions and teaching practices of Flemish history teachers: an inquiry into their use of learning materials in history lessons

2015-2021
promotor: Prof. Bruno De Wever, Prof. Christophe Verbruggen

Conceptions on how history should be taught in secondary education have changed profoundly in recent years.  Teachers should now focus on the development of pupils' historical thinking, in contrast to former approaches that have been characterised as an encyclopedic memorization of facts and fixed narratives. Even if this contrast does not honour the diversity of past practices, the conceptual shift is still considerable. How do Flemish teachers cope with this change? Do they share these new conceptions? Do they apply these insights in their lessons? Or do they stick to the more traditional teaching methods? Teachers have to reflect and make choices on these issues while preparing and giving their lessons. Therefore this research will analyse the learning materials teachers use and develop. These questions will be dealt with in a mixed-methods approach combining surveys, classroom observations and interviews.

Keywords: Didactics, Surveys, Field research, Language and text analysis, Quantitative

Publications:
De Paepe, Tom, and Eddy Awouters. “Tablets in de les geschiedenis: hoe kun je er concreet mee aan de slag gaan?” Hermes 18.56 (2014): 1–6.

Contact: Tom.DePaepe@UGent.be