The enhancing of historical thinking is one of the most important objects of historical education steadily emphasized. In fact, there are not so many studies about the accurate definition of concept or an enhancing method, however.
In this respect, t...
The enhancing of historical thinking is one of the most important objects of historical education steadily emphasized. In fact, there are not so many studies about the accurate definition of concept or an enhancing method, however.
In this respect, this thesis considered the characteristics of historical thinking which could be compared with other subjects and what the constituent elements are, based on the study of this historical thinking discussed until now. And this thesis introduced a historical film as a method of learning that can enhance the historical thinking. A classwork through the historical film stimulates the lost interests of students and what is more, it is expected as another learning method that can foster historical thinking.
Historical thinking can be prescribed as a complex mentality that one comprehend the problem clearly with his own knowledge when contacted with a historical matter, build up a hypothesis for the solution, gather and analyze the historical materials and then judge the matter in his own way. The one who has historical thinking like this will pursue variation and continuity in space and time, and will reconstruct the missing part in events and historical materials imaginarily. And when this one deals with historical matter, he has the characteristic that critical ability and judgement are shown.
On the basis of this point, this thesis established such four areas as comprehension ability of historical time, inquiring ability of history, imaginative power of history and judgement of history.
Historical film can be defined as a film which is made of the past days, the present time and future events from the viewpoint of the present time. Among these films, we should disclose the past controversial points which were not lighted up by history and pay attention to the films that will give new analyses on the historical matters. The historical thinking would be enhanced more easily if we would grasp the strengths and weaknesses of visual media, complement them and make use of the films in practical classwork.
There are five areas of understanding history acquired through these historical films : ① the understanding of historical facts and information ② the understanding of time concept ③ the understanding of historical context and situation ④ the empathetic and imaginative understanding of history ⑤ the critical understanding of visual media.
As these areas of understanding history through the visual media are deeply related with the historical thinking mentioned previously in all areas, the enhancing of historical thinking will be very effective.
Through this basic study, I judged the enhancing of historical thinking using historical films possible sufficiently, selected historical films and put my classwork into practice.
<2001 : A Space Odyssey> and <Quest for Fire> are applied as a main text, the effects of classwork were confirmed and analyzed with questionnaire. I tried enhancing the historical thinking by applying <The Eternal Empire>(永遠한帝國) and <Gladiator> as supplementary materials.
What can be confirmed through classwork applying historical films are in substance as follows; first, students tried to display historical imagination and exhibited the critical power that couldn't be done during the class of textbook, lastly, students understood history more easily through this method and could preserve their memory longer.
Therefore, I think that we should try to find the learning method using historical films and that we should try to keep on increasing historical thinking.
But if we depended on only historical films simply, we could not increase the students' historical thinking fully and we could not give our classes in all areas with only historical film. When we make a teaching program for the year at the beginning of a term, we need to establish proper units and collect variety of visual materials. And we need a flexibility when we have classwork.