Teaching and learning History in the 21st century – challenges and opportunities

In line with what classic authors of epistemology of History such as Michel de Certeau or Henry Marrou showed, the approach to History in Basic and Secondary Education, due to its humanistic dimension par excellence, can and should be seen as an opportunity for students to feel and live the experience of the Other. The importance of learning History, however, does not stop here. Benedetto Croce wrote that “all historiography is contemporary history”, clarifying Fernando Catroga this occurs “not because History has the 'present time' as its object, but due to the circumstance that the 'present' is the focus of retrospectives, including that which not long ago was only future” (Catroga, O valor epistemológico da História da História, 2010, p. 39).
These epistemological assumptions support the idea that these perspectives cannot, and should not, be forgotten and/or dissociated when carrying out the didactic transposition of historical knowledge in the classroom. Therefore, the importance of History is highlighted as a fundamental instrument in the construction of the future of young people, that any simplistic and intuitive intervention, carried out outside epistemological reflection, more than promoting historical understanding and understanding of Otherness, can result in approaches that carry imponderabilities and can eventually lead to caricatural generalizations.
The teaching and learning of History contribute to the formation of active and responsible citizenship, allowing, through thoughtful, planned, and non-casuistic pedagogical strategies, to understand the world in which live and decenter students from their point of view. and critically analyse the diferent views of the problem, thereby helping to overcome judgments based on one-way criteria.
In this sense, there are many questions that presently arise and pose to the professor who teaches History and that must be brought to the center of the debate that needs to be established between those responsible for defining the specific theoretical and methodological framework of academic research and the transposition teaching in the classroom.
All interested authors are therefore invited to contribute to this debate, presenting proposals for articles on the teaching of History in its multiple aspects:
— school manuals and curricula;
— instrumentalization in History;
— from intention to practice – research and experiences in the
classroom context;
— pedagogical innovation;
— teacher training.

Organization:
Isilda Monteiro, Escola Superior de Educação de Paula Frassinetti