Concepts for historical and geographical thinking in Sweden’s and Spain’s Primary Education curricula

Abstract

The goal of this study is to compare the presence of concepts for historical and geographical thinking in the national curricula for Primary Education in Spain and Sweden in order to analyze if these thinking concepts can enable new active learning methodologies in the Social Science classroom. The comparative study is based on a qualitative investigation using a horizontal evaluation instrument (international compared analysis). Compared items were divided in four dimensions: 1. curriculum structure—subjects, timetable, compulsory, ratio, etc.-, 2. educational methodologies—project-based learning, research, practical lessons-, 3. Objectives and evaluation—aims, evaluation criteria, standards-, and 4. Contents—conceptual, procedural, and attitudinal. The results show that, despite a different structure for the history and geography subjects in Primary Education, neither of the two curricula present historical and geographical thinking concepts as a fundamental aim for Primary Education and, at the same time, the low presence of these thinking concepts is linked to traditional teaching models still based on positivism and memorization.

Holistic or Traditional Conceptions of Heritage among Early-Childhood and Primary Trainee Teachers

“…The majority consider heritage to consist of important monuments and buildings, while other heritage elements pass by unnoticed in classrooms and lose their didactic potential. For this reason and the lack of concepts for historical thinking, some authors, such as González-Monfort [41] or Moreno-Vera and Alvén [44], advocate the inclusion of heritage education from the earliest educational stages, beginning in early-childhood education.…”

Evaluating the Impact of Learning Management Systems in Geographical Education in Primary School: An Experimental Study on the Importance of Learning Analytics-Based Feedback

“…This approach aimed to foster greater student engagement in their own teaching-learning process, promoting self-management and awareness of their knowledge. This line of action is aligned with current issues of geography education [17,19,20]. Concurrently, this approach provided teachers with daily information of interest about the learning process, eliminating the need to wait for summative assessments for this information [8,9,40].…”

“…As various authors such as Wineburg [16] point out, information is now just a few mouse clicks away. Therefore, the importance lies not just in knowing the information contained in a textbook, but in understanding how to access it and competently judge its veracity [17,18]. In fact, Brooks et al [19] underscore the need for students to think geographically.…”

By Toutatis! Trainee Teachers’ Motivation When Using Comics to Learn History

“…This can basically be explained by the fact that the teaching of the social sciences, and history in particular, still maintains an extremely rigid and traditional structure ( Estepa, 2017 ; Moreno-Vera and Alvén, 2020 ), in which the explanatory method (the masterclass) continues to be the most common approach when constructing new knowledge. The textbook is still the most commonly used educational resource in history classes, as pointed out by Vera et al (2014) , who, following an investigation of history teaching in Spain, concluded that more than 85% of teachers continued to employ textbooks as the only resource in the classroom.…”