La construcción del conocimiento histórico según el futuro profesorado de educación secundaria

Abstract

In the framework of studies related to the development of historical thinking, we define the construct construction of historical knowledge in order to stress that historical method implies the use of metacognitive concepts, forging an indivisible construct. According to this proposal, we have designed the Historical Knowledge Construction Test (CONCONHIS, in Spanish), both in Spanish and Portuguese version, aimed at students of Secondary Education. This instrument has been submitted to processes which have offered content, criterion and construct validity for the test (Aiken, 2003; Mateo y Martínez, 2008). The empirical research, shown in this work, corresponds to the implementation of the test in the context of the Faculty of Arts at University of Porto. The participants were students from the Master in History Teaching and the objectives of this study were two: to describe the epistemological theories of prospective History teachers and to compare the development of the three defined constructs to the established criteria for students. The findings show that there are challenges related to epistemological theories of teachers: problems in making inferences and in interpreting historical sources creatively. The previous information must be understood according to limits of this preliminary study, which should be extended in following researches.