It can be said that the ultimate aims of the education of history are cultivating historical consciousness and historical thinking ability, solving the problems wisely that we are confronted with, and cultivating the ability that can deal with the fu...
It can be said that the ultimate aims of the education of history are cultivating historical consciousness and historical thinking ability, solving the problems wisely that we are confronted with, and cultivating the ability that can deal with the future society. For these aims, we need to slough off the lecture-oriented teaching methods centering around teachers, and to improve teaching methods which can improve the students' thinking ability. An appropriate method for these necessities is 'the study through historical materials'.
Therefore I've studied and applied 'the study through historical materials' as an improvement upon the methods of teaching and learning for cultivating students' historical thinking ability.
I divided the students in the third grade of Ullung Middle School into an Experimental Class and a Comparative Class, and I applied 'the study through historical materials' to them through dispersive approaching methods. The following are the results.
First, the total improvement of scholastic ability in the experimental class which has studied through historical materials is more achieved than in the comparative class which has been taught in lecture-oriented ways, but it's not meaningful difference. Only in the self-evaluating written test, the two groups show meaningful difference in the average records.
Second, the result of the self-evaluating written test shows the meaningful difference in the area of thinking ability, but not in the area of fact-recognition.
On the ground of this result, I can draw the conclusion that 'the study through historical materials' is more effective in the improvement of thinking ability than the existing lecture-oriented teaching. Also in the after-survey questioned the students, I can draw the conclusion that 'the study through historical materials' is helpful for the improvement of historical thinking ability, and it has aroused the interest of the students in learning history somewhat.
But there are some problems in spreading the application of 'the study through historical materials' which helps the improvement of thinking ability like this.
Above all, though there are some kinds of materials for Korean history, the quantity of the materials is insufficient in applying to the scenes of education. In addition, there are some limits in applying them to the scenes of schooling where various individual differences are existing because almost all of them are only interpreted materials of originals. Therefore I feel keenly the necessity of development of historical materials and usable guide books which gives consideration to the development steps of the students' consciousness and their intellectual standards. Also not only the development of cultural history-oriented materials but also the collection of thematically sorted materials about one theme is needed.
Second, it's true that the historical materials in the Korean history text books are insufficient. Accordingly, historians must try to put lots of illustrations and historical materials in the text books in order that all the materials in the text can be put to more practical and effective use in 'the study through historical materials'.
Lastly, the teachers must keep on studying 'the study through historical materials', and much in-service training for the teachers on the various teaching methods must be accompanied.