Arab Educational Information Network

Our proposed paper questions the current aims and objectives of history teaching. We argue that history teaching should seek to develop students’ historical understanding and skills in addition to ‘nation building’; otherwise, there is a risk of indoctrination. The core concepts in teaching history are causation and consequences, change and continuity, interpretation, significance, and differences and similarities. By developing these, students will be more able to challenge and critique the prejudices of their sectarian groups and understand and appreciate similarities and differences amongst groups. However, the main challenge in adopting these concepts in teaching history is the resistance of those who seek to emphasize nation building and fear that students’ knowledge might be compromised if the emphasis shifts to skills. Hence to address the latter debate, our study will implement a short term intervention where these two different approaches to history teaching will be implemented in teaching the same two lessons. The first approach is the traditional one which focuses on content knowledge and uses some of the textbooks currently taught in Lebanon by most schools. The other approach will adopt an inquiry and skills based approach. The main objectives of this intervention are to study the attitudes towards these two different approaches considering motivation, engagement and understanding of historical concepts. (Author’s Abstract)