Dissertation project: "Learning to teach history. A qualitative study on the development of subject-specific thinking and planning patterns of primary school teachers in the context of a further training series on historical learning in non-fiction lessons"

In a time of social upheaval, political polarisation and global crises, the discussion of history is becoming increasingly relevant - not only in public discourse, but also in the education system. Children also encounter historical topics at an early age, whether through media representations, family stories or through buildings, street names, stories, radio plays, books and films. This omnipresence of historical references raises the question of how children of primary school age can be enabled to form a reflective historical judgement (Becher/Gläser 2023). In the didactic discussion, the task of contributing to the development of a reflective historical awareness is ascribed to non-fiction teaching (GDSU 2013). Although this objective is anchored in the Perspective Framework for General Studies and in the core curricula of the federal states, the concrete implementation by teachers remains largely unexplored. Initial empirical studies indicate that primary school teachers have so far only paid limited attention to the historical perspective when planning lessons (Bade 2024) and that they also have rather limited professional knowledge of history didactics and only moderate self-efficacy beliefs (Hartmann 2019). Against the backdrop of the high social relevance of historical learning and the curricular anchoring of corresponding educational objectives, this finding points to a central challenge, as it can be assumed that insufficient professional preparation of teachers makes it difficult to implement this in practice in the classroom and that the potential of non-fiction teaching to promote reflective historical judgement formation at primary school age has not yet been fully exploited. This means that there is a need for professionalisation that has not yet been systematically addressed in either didactic research into the teaching of history or didactics of history (Krösche 2021; von Reeken 2017).

In view of this, the dissertation project is the first to develop, implement and evaluate a history didactic further training series explicitly for subject teachers in order to investigate how the subject-specific planning and interpretation patterns of teachers change as a result of participating in further training based on history didactics and what significance they attribute to this for their own professional development. The training series was designed on the basis of the conditions for success of effective teacher training according to Lipowsky and Rzejak (2019) and adapted to history-related non-fiction teaching. The training series was carried out from February to May 2025 at the University of Oldenburg with a total of nine non-fiction teachers from primary and special schools in Lower Saxony. The training programme comprised a total of three face-to-face modules and an online module with accompanying transfer phases in which the participants tested the content in their own teaching practice.

To collect data, problem-centred interviews with vignettes were conducted with the participating teachers before and after the training course. The evaluation was carried out using the content-structuring qualitative content analysis according to Kuckartz (2018).

Bibliography

Bade, Gesine: Teachers in Sachunterricht between aspiration and reality. Underestimated potentials of civic education in primary school, Frankfurt a.M. 2024.

Becher, Andrea/Gläser, Eva: Historisches Lernen, in: Goll, Eva Maria/Goll, Thomas (eds.): Grundlagen zur Didaktik des gesellschaftswissenschaftlichen Sachunterrichts, Frankfurt a.M. 2023.

Gesellschaft für Didaktik des Sachunterrichts (ed.): Perspektivrahmen Sachunterricht. Completely revised and expanded edition. Bad Heilbrunn 2013.

Hartmann, Carina: Teacher professionalism in history-related non-fiction teaching. Subject-didactic knowledge, motivational orientations and beliefs in the context of institutional teacher training (Empirical research in elementary and primary education 4), Bad Heilbrunn 2019.

Krösche, Heike: Teaching and promoting early historical thinking in the field of tension between curricular requirements and professionalisation processes in primary school teaching, in: in: Buchberger, Wolfgang/Kühberger, Christoph (eds.): Historisches Lernen in der Primarstufe. Viewpoints - Challenges - Perspectives, Innsbruck 2021, pp.133-150.

Kuckartz, Udo: Qualitative content analysis. Methods, practice, computer support, 4th ed., Weinheim Basel 2018.

Lipowsky, Frank/Rzejak, Daniela: What makes training programmes for teachers successful? An update, in: Groot-Wilken, Bernd/Koerber, Rolf (eds.): Sustainable professionalisation for teachers. Ideas, developments, concepts, Bielefeld 2019, pp. 15-56.

Reeken, Dietmar von: Historisches Lehren und Lernen, in: Hartinger, Andreas/Lange, Kim (eds.): Sachunterricht - Didaktik für die Grundschule, 4th ed., Berlin 2017, pp. 105-122.