Before starting to speak about methodology in history teaching, i.e. how to teach history, it seems me interesting to deal – in a short way – the basic, "simple" question: Why is history teaching actually important at all? Even if it is not really our own choice whether history is taught at school or not, the principal motivation to deal with history is also very relevant for the way of doing it.

Keith Andreetti and Karin Doull, two British methodologists who also developed teaching material for young pupils, summarize the answers in the following manner:

Like in all teaching processes we can find – of course – also different concepts in history teaching (e.g. more knowledge- and teacher-concentrated ones versa more understanding- and student-orientated ones), and history teaching can – of course – pursue different aims and can follow different principles. But among the most important ones, for a modern way of teaching, can be mentioned:

• to develop the pupils critical thinking (which is also helpful for other school subjects but especially for becoming a mature individual and citizen)
• to develop their ability to think and to judge in a multiperspective way (which means also not to look for "easy" explications, generally in their life) and
• to develop much more understanding of historical and social processes, a general overview and connections instead of giving too much attention to so-called historical facts (i.e. to the history of wars, kings, dates, … - learnt by heart and forgotten immediately after the next classroom examination).

This means that a teacher's task is also to encourage pupils to move on from merely reproducing facts and figures to actively practising and using various skills such as discussing, hypothesizing, comparing, summarizing complicated contents, presenting their own contributions and results, viewing topics from various angles, reproducing contents graphically, working in teams (e.g. sharing the workload etc.).

Some methods and techniques to facilitate the development of these skills in learning history were presented, tested and discussed in the workshop.

Overall, the suggestions for modern classroom activities based on the following teaching principles:

• to explain history (and to let the pupils explain history) not only in the traditional "linear" way but supported by historical comparisons (e.g. of different époques or regions/countries),
• to contrast the conventional approach of a history of facts (rulers, wars, dates and years) with topics of socio-historical and general relevance. Children and teenagers take an increased interest in a topic if it is relevant to their own life, such as school, parents, friends, games, education etc.
• to make abstract concepts (e.g. “the 19th century”, “Communism”) more easily explain by supporting them with descriptive examples: What was everyday life like? What are the similarities and differences to the present? What was the daily routine of children like? Who had the chance to go to school? Which children had to work from a very early age onwards? What did children do in their spare time?
• to raise pupils’ awareness that many aspects of modern life (e.g. democratic elections, travelling, school attendance, the right to have spare time, the distribution of roles among members of a family) have evolved throughout history and should not be taken for granted at all,
• to try to connect a historical event, a historical development and historical movement to the present time in order to understand it better or to understand its relevance for us today,
• to let the pupils learn in the most possible active way which means: not to tell them "the" history but to help them to find explanations by their own - by using source material, background information, statistical data, knowledge from former lessons, …
• to teach them skills for a critical interpretation of all kinds of (historical) sources: to discuss historical texts and pictures; to have the pupils hypothesize on how to make sense of the sources; to let them comment and evaluate the subject matter; to compare it to the present and other countries; to find out the (e.g. political) perspective of the source, to hypothesize on the authors intentions, on the context, the aims, etc. and to compare with opposite sources,
• to train the pupils to see a historical event from different points of view, in a multiperspective way (e.g. the "discovery" of America in the traditional conquerors' view but also in the view of poor "discovered" native Indian people),
• to work interdisciplinarily and integrate literary texts as sources; draw geographical maps and practise skills that are not only relevant in history lessons, but even more so to the pupils’ general education and their future places of work: gathering information independently, reading texts carefully, comparing facts and trends,
• to have them work on a selection of sources/texts/topics and talk about the aspects relevant to them in a short presentation in order to train their team work and presentation skills.

All in all: to actively engage them in the process of learning and teaching.

Concrete examples which were given in the workshop were:

1. Longitudinal and Cross Sections, Comparisons - e.g. comparison of slavery in classical antiquity, in modern times (like in America in the 16th century) and in present time; comparison of events like the 1848 revolutions in several countries; a critical view on (attempted) assassinations as a political ""instrument" or the step-by-step development of the Human Rights in a longitudinal section of world history.

2. Connection to Present Times - e.g. what the ideas of the French Revolution in 1789 meant for our present time.

3. Personal Approach and Empathy – to involve the pupils personally, to let them identify with historical decision makers but also with historical "simple" people (what would you have done on their places, how would you have felt in their situation?), to let them consider social, moral and political dilemmas and motivations and to consider consequences of choices made in history.

4. Social History – to include also topics of socio-historical and general relevance (e.g. women in a certain époque, children in the past, making bread in the past…). One concrete example was also given by the two books, edited by the project "History and History Teaching in Southeast Europe": "Childhood in the Past" and "Women and Men in the Past". (Milan Ristovic, Dubravka Stojanovic (Eds.): Childhood in the Past. 19^th and 20^th Century. Additional Teaching Materials. Belgrade: Association for Social History 2001. Snezhana Dimitrova, Kristina Popova, Petar Vodenicharov: Women and Men in the Past. 19^th and 20^th Century. Additional Teaching Materials. Blagoevgrad 2002. Free book orders: Center for the Study of Balkan Societies and Cultures, University of Graz, daniela.grabe@uni-graz.at)

5. Interdisciplinary Methods – e.g. to let them draw historical maps, to include literature sources, to discuss the mentality/mentalities of a certain époque also by its arts products, …

6. Maps, Schemes, Diagrams etc. – first to use different "perception ways" (visual, graphic, …) but also to use maps, schemes and diagrams in an active way: not only presenting them but also helping the pupils to draw their own visualizations.

7. Pictures, Photos and Caricatures and

8. Text Sources – written sources as well as oral history and eyewitness accounts; pictures and cartoons as well as artefacts, as an illustration, as own type of historical source, as exercise to hypothesize on the author's/artist's intention, perspective, background, …

9. Literary Texts – as personal – and sometimes for pupils more interesting historical source but also in order to let them find out the difference between history and fiction.

10. Tests and Learning Games – unfortunately there was no time to show concrete examples for active learning games and for the methodology of testing history knowledge and skills.

12. "Inner Differentiation" – This means to work also in pairs and smaller groups, to let the pupils present some topics, to let them choose the topics of their own interest, to give them different tasks according to their interest and according to their abilities (e.g. drawing a poster for the more "creative" learning types, summarizing statistics for the more "mathematical" types, interpreting literature sources for the more "literary" types, etc.)

14. New Media were show in the whole practical work (e.g. how to present a cartoon by not showing all information at the first view – in order to make it more interesting, more challenging, to make it a kind of "guessing game").

Summarizing: It should be shown how important it is to include the pupils in a very active way into the learning process, to make the topics relevant for them by including social history and comparison to the present time, to help the pupils to develop skills like critical thinking, organizing the group and the individual work, to let them interpret history by their own and by historical sources and to use variety of methods, visualization as learning support and the pupils' curiosity as motivating factor..

Expert Daniela Grabe