Editorial: Teaching history in the era of globalization: Epistemological and methodological challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need of several changes within the field of History Education. Firstly, the need of a methodological change that integrates active learning methods, digital resources, and emerging technologies in order to attend the non-presential lessons for the students. Secondly, the need of a multicultural approach on teaching history, social, and gender equality moving away from supremacists' dogma. It is necessary for teachers to change their conception of why and for what reasons they teach history. This need has become more acute with the COVID-19 pandemic: fighting vs. hate speeches through argumentation and critical analysis of sources to avoid fake news and to develop a learning perception evidences. This Research Topic is focused both on Primary and Secondary Education, but also on Higher Education, considering History teachers training courses. Particularly, this book focuses to know the development of the skills of active and future History teachers who are trained at programs at universities to bring a profound methodological and content change in the way History is taught.

Abril-López et al. presents the research results in relation to an interdisciplinary teaching innovation project with Early Childhood Preservice Teachers (ECPT). The main goal was to improve the learning to learn competence, during a virtual tour at the Community of Madrid Regional Archaeological Museum (MAR, Spain). The results show an improvement in this competence in Early Childhood Preservice Teachers. They highlight the importance of carrying out virtual museum tours from a challenge-based learning for the development of big ideas, essential questions, challenges, and activities on socioeconomic, environmental and emotional knowledge. This experience shows the insufficient educational adaptation of the virtual museum tour to the Early Childhood Education stage from a technological and didactic point of view.

In his article, Alven points out that in Sweden, immigrant students with a non-European background perform worse in school than students from the majority group. By analyzing the items in the national test in history relative to how the immigrant students perform, this study investigates whether there are certain types of items that, on the one hand, discriminate against them and, on the other hand, work to their advantage. This is important knowledge if we want to be able to make fair and just assessments.

Chaparro-Sainz et al. analyze in this article the opinions of teachers in initial training about the use of heritage in the classrooms and to inquire about their relationship with their own teaching approaches. The most significant results show a broad interest in heritage although there is a preference for heritage resources more linked to their undergraduate studies (History, History of Art, Archeology) compared with heritage resources of a technological nature. Regarding teaching approaches, it has been observed that those who present a student-based approach (CCSF) value heritage more highly.

Castro-Fernández et al. present the results of an intervention proposal about cultural heritage and carried out during initial teacher training. The social theme taken as a reference was the pilgrim route of the Way of St. James. These results show that the future teachers learned to value the emotional dimensions of heritage; highlighted active methodological strategies in order to discover and understand the social reality; emphasized the value of a reflexive and critical model of teaching to develop a committed attitude toward the environment and identified the fact that controversial issues are a useful tool to civic education and the development of critical thinking.

José Farrujia-de la Rosa et al. present a research that had two main aims: to familiarize students with heritage itineraries as key tools for the teaching of Social Sciences and to develop professional competencies related to the coordination of teachers among educational levels, teaching, and learning strategies when using historical heritage and improving digital competencies. The main results of the research highlight three aspects: the need to apply pedagogical, technological, and educational resources to promote active and meaningful learning in future teachers; the need to use virtual environments as learning and communication spaces in inter-university contexts and the importance of using local environments as scenarios for teaching Social Sciences.

Díez-Bedmar inquires, in her article, how introducing the gender category, feminism theories, and intersectionality into social sciences education could be key for the construction of a more critical and egalitarian future. The main goal is to analyze the historical thinking development in pre-service Spanish teacher students and their capacity for constructing critical discourses with a gender perspective. The results show that pre-service teachers are not able to identify their own gender roles and prejudiced attitudes when they attempt to explain a social problem and they propose solutions.

Guerrero-Romera et al. analyze the validity of a questionnaire designed to identify the perceptions of in-service teachers about the teaching approaches they believe to be most appropriate for teaching history in primary and secondary education in Spain. The results show that the teachers surveyed identify three teaching approaches: a traditional approach based on the memorization of content; an intermediate model in which there is interaction between teachers and students and a third focused on students and the development of historical and critical thinking.

Ciriza-Mendívil et al. point out that the teacher training in digital competence has been pushed into the background, especially in social sciences education, in which the use of ICTs is an opportunity for improvement and educational innovation. The primary aim of this study was for preservice teachers to develop digital competence in teaching social sciences by integrating the technological, pedagogical and content knowledge types using the TPACK model. The results of this research show that implementing specific didactic proposals based on the TPACK model to develop DCE in preservice teachers opens a field of analysis that is innovative and beneficial.

Paricio et al. investigate the difficulties of pre-service history teachers face in understanding and implementing a history curriculum focused on historical reasoning. Consequently, the main contribution is observation of a twofold threshold that pre-service teachers must cross to understand and accept an interpretive history curriculum: they must overcome the identification between past and history and instead immerse themselves in the necessarily interpretive nature of any history; and they must stop viewing learning as knowledge internalization and reproduction and, instead, embrace a conception of learning as inquiry and reasoning.

Muñoz et al. purposes a study to identify the level of knowledge that teachers in training have on globalization and the world health situation in recent years and to understand the perceptions that teachers in training have on the foundations and purposes of history teaching in this context. The results show that teachers in training recognize the importance of teaching history for people to know their culture and their past. This enables them to conduct historical analyses that highlight the existence of skills associated with the development of historical thinking.

López-Martínez and Jiménez-Martínez point out in their article that the teaching of History in primary school must integrate education for active global citizenship in the face of inequalities and social injustices caused by the constant violation of human rights today. The results show what the students know and feel about human rights, social problems and injustices, and the role of children throughout history. The research has allowed, in the first place, to know the ethical keys to design professional teacher training experiences according to the current times and, secondly, to guide us in the configuration of training spaces to cover the weaknesses caused by the democratic deficit.

Trigueros-Cano et al. present a study that aims to identify the most suitable activities and exercises for the development of historical knowledge and skills and their later evaluation. The results show that exercises involving the interpretation of texts and images which require students to think about and apply the historical knowledge acquired are particularly useful, as are questions which seek historical explanation and causal reasoning. However, objective tests or brief questions about historical events are not considered to be very suitable for the adequate development of historical knowledge and, therefore, of historical competences.

González-Valencia et al. describe a study, conducted in Catalonia (Spain), that examines the dimensions of global citizenship education (GCE) that appear when secondary school students analyse images taken from the digital platforms of the mainstream media. The results show that students in the final year of compulsory secondary education (aged 15–16) have great difficulty with analyzing the information and images contained in media from a global citizenship perspective. The students do not have the tools necessary for critical interpretation of social facts and problems and they are not able to formulate arguments or make decisions relating to actions within the parameters of social justice.

Finally, Guerrero-Romera and Perez-Ortiz present a study that aims to contrast a theoretical model with a questionnaire designed to identify the training needs of secondary and baccalaureate teachers about the teaching of the historical thinking skills. The results will make it possible to detect and identify needs and deficiencies in ongoing teacher training. Furthermore, it will become possible to discover new elements to improve training processes from the point of view of in-service teachers.

Author contributions

AC-S was the primary author of the manuscript. CG-C conceived and designed the project of which this study was part. PR wrote the first draft of the manuscript and contributed to revisions. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Funding

This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry for Science, Innovation and Universities (Grant No. PGC2018-094491-B-C33), the Seneca Foundation Regional Agency for Science and Technology (Grant No. 20638/JLI/18), the Research project HistoryLab for European Civic Engagement (Grant No. 2020-1-ES01-KA226-HE-095430), and the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation (Grant Nos. MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and PID2020-113453RB-I00).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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