Recently historians paid a great attention on narrative history with the stream of the new cultural history. History educators also noticed the importance of narrative, because history lesson has been a memorization of historical facts based on exposi...
Recently historians paid a great attention on narrative history with the stream of the new cultural history. History educators also noticed the importance of narrative, because history lesson has been a memorization of historical facts based on expository text of textbooks. This study is to find a potential of narrative history applying it to history classrooms with narrative type of history texts. For this, I have studied historic background, concepts, and functions of narrative history. Moreover I have created narrative history texts applicable to the classroom with lesson plans.
Narrative history was ignored and deserted with the emergence of scientific history in 20C. However It was revived again in the late 20C with a new cultural history, 'linguistic turn', postmodernism etc. Narrative is a statement or a text of description, and history narrative is a narration of past events in an order of time with causal relations. It is a good way for historians as well as for readers to have an empathy & pleasure in writing and reading history. Narrative has been doubted by structurists eager to preserve the status of scientific history, while extreme linguistic-philosophers regarded it as a discourse of fiction in literature and history.
On the other hand, narrative in history education is related to " domain-specific cognition theory". According to this theory, narrative is the representative way of understanding history, which includes essential history concepts of cause-effect relation. Narrative can be utilized in a way of constructing and expressing historical consciousness and cognition. In addition, history teachers can use narrative as a means of composing contents of history lesson. So I developed narrative history texts and applied them to history classrooms to find out students' reaction.
The result came like this; textbook failed to lead students to active participation on content, while narrative helped them to think historic circumstances and background of events. One of students who read narrative text supposed as if he were a person in the past. He imagined the life and feeling of the people of the past. They reacted with a long sentence writing after reading narrative. The concrete and metaphorical description of narrative leads students to promote analysis and interpretation about historic events. Textbook readers try to judge historic events in a conventional and simple way, while narrative readers reflect them in at-that-time situations and review the results with a good sense of history.
The attitude of textbook readers remains in a level of like-dislike emotion rather than in a level of reconsidering the meaning of historical facts under their circumstances. Narrative helped students to highlight continuity of human behavior and events, and helped students think about backgrounds, results and meaning of historic events, and make students to change their historical consciousness with insights into the past.