Kastamonu Eğitim Dergisi (Mar 2019)
The Views of Students in History Department About “The Misuses of History”
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to determine the views of students who are both historian candidates and pre-service teachers about the use and misuse of history. The research study was carried out with qualitative research method and basic qualitative research design. The population of the study consisted of students studying in their final year of bachelor’s studies in the Department of History and taking pedagogical formation training at Ataturk University Faculty of Letters in 2014-2015 academic year. While composing the study group, convenience sampling method was adopted. The data were collected via open-ended questionnaire and analysed via content analysis. Considering the findings yielded, the participants pointed out that the most important reason for different and opposite interpretations about a historical character in the case of Adülhamit II were not being objective. All of the participants determined that history could be misused. The participants’ views on the ways of misuses of history could be listed as follows: using past for political purposes, discrediting historical figures and personalities with false information, the ideological description of the past, and the distortion of the past via mass media. When the participants’ views about how to raise students’ awareness about the use and misuse of history are examined, the emphasis on objectivity stands out. The participants suggested that students should be taught history objectively and they should view history objectively. The other top views stated by the participants are listed as follows: raising student awareness about the misuse of history and its damages, encouraging them to do research, guiding them to true and realistic sources, suggesting students that each event should be evaluated considering the conditions of the period under which it was experienced and benefiting from different sources. It was revealed in the research study that the participants partially had a command of historical methodology and they were not qualified enough about the misuses of history. Historian candidates and pre-service history teachers should be provided training for historical methodology and also they should acquire skills for the use and analysis of sources. Pre-service teachers should be provided with the best training about how history could be misused and how students can be made aware of it.
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