Enriching History teaching-Learning : Based on practices at Jnana Prabodhini

Enriching History teaching-Learning : 

Based on practices at Jnana Prabodhini

A few years ago, some teachers from Arunachal Pradesh had come to Pune for a training program. We took them on a heritage walk around the city to visit various places of historical importance, narrating the stories that occurred there. An Arunachali teacher expressed that he had experienced for the first time that eminent personalities from history textbooks are not imaginary or characters from novels but real, living people! What we teach has actually happened!

 

Contrary to this, when we visited Moirang in Manipur, we saw the war memorial of Subhashbabu’s Indian National Army. While observing the relics in the museum we realized for the first time that the Moirang battle was a battle not only between the British and the INA, but the Manipuri people also had a great contribution to it. Till then we were ignorant about this fact.

 

A fragmented understanding of history leads to a lot of such misconceptions which we carry in our adult life. 

 

Therefore, a well-founded education of History is indispensable for national integration. Swami Vivekanand proclaimed that the purpose of education should be man-making for nation-building. Good history education will build responsible citizens working for the betterment of society and national interest.

 

We generally take pride in describing ourselves as a nation with ‘unity in diversity. If we study the history of Indian civilization and culture, we will realize that as Indians, our underlying unity, manifests itself through multiple forms. This is why we find common value systems across India, though its external expressions may be varied. These values have been enshrined in our Constitution. History should teach us to appreciate diversity while experiencing the underlying unity.

 

1.     History education should aim at attitude formation that can enable character building of individual citizens and building a national spirit. History can help the learner to understand our strengths and limitations as a nation. Educational institutions can design a program to build on our strengths and overcome weaknesses to develop high self-esteem. We can preserve the traditions by improving them and adapting them to modern standards. Our heritage reflects in the language, architecture, dances, medicine, food, which can be useful as any other society. The Indian society can learn that to achieve something, it does not always need western methods. 

2.     Learning history helps students to find their role models. Students can learn from such role models about commitment towards their duties, values and life. 

3.     Education of history can help students empathise with the hardships suffered by our ancestors and aspiring communities. In history, we find examples of peaceful co-existence of culturally and geographically diverse sections of our society. This demands a great degree of tolerance. 

4.     History education must incorporate principles of critical thinking. Learning history should start with curiosity about our surroundings and society. In this age of bombardment of information, students should be taught about examination and interpretation of information.

 

Today we observe that the young generation in the country is confused by conflicting narratives, separatist approaches, and polarisation causing intolerance. This is a major threat to national integration. Therefore, history education is important in the formative years of a child. We have experienced that teaching history with the above objective, practices and approaches can help future citizens to come up with creative solutions for present-day problems. 

 

 To learn any subject we need to address five main elements.

The Knowledge of the subject is the starting point. One has to acquire the skills required to learn the subject. The most important thing required is the motivation to learn. Such kind of learning leads to attitude formation, which helps the learner to find his life goals.

To set spectrum of learning for any subject, a teacher has to define and organize content keeping the learning process in view, work on skills development required for learning and set context for learning that subject.

 

History teacher had to organize content and redesigned the textbooks. The subject content for History learning should consider the following areas:

1.     History of Art and Culture of India

2.     History of Social Reforms in India with Special Emphasis on Bhakti Movement

3.     Historical Developments in the field of Science, Technology and Mathematics

4.     History of Political Dynasties

5.     Historical developments in the field of Philosophy and Languages,

6.     History of Trade, Commerce and Cultural Ties.

 

Challenge in history teaching is how to remove the imbalance in content (for example regional imbalance) and how to go beyond history of political dynasties?  And how to go beyond history textbooks?

History teacher can do few experiments in introduction of new content through different activities apart from content printed in prescribed in textbooks. Teachers can develop a collection of supplementary reading material. At Jnana Prabodhini, we are developing such supplementary reading material.  

 

Supplementary reading material can be on

 

1.     Based on the life of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the history of Marathas, Rajputs and the Sikh community.

2.     Inspiring stories about the contribution of women in administration, knowledge sector, social reforms, Bhakti movement, art and culture and the freedom struggle.

3.     Content to emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches we try to teach History of knowledge: history of mathematics in India, history of Indian medicine, history of Indian architecture, history of philosophy and overlap in content as geography in history, chemistry in history. Students inclined towards other disciplines learn the value of history.

4.     Post-independence History of Indian pride also needs to be stressed: the Story of ISRO, the story of BARC, the story of cooperative movement (Story of Amul), story of restorations (Somnath, Hampi, archaeological sites such as Lothal) etc.

5.     Content regarding stories about the role of great leaders who worked hard to overcome the shortcomings in the Indian society.

6.     History of religious reformers that strove to maintain social harmony through centuries. 

 

Learning is a process of acquiring new information. Learning processes play an important role in the achievement of the objectives of teaching-learning. To acquire new knowledge and skills which ultimately can influence attitudes, decisions and actions of a learner, teachers should come up with new experiments in history teaching with reference to the pedagogy of History learning.

 

We at Jnana Prabodhini, practise teaching-learning processes like experiential learning, project-based learning, community participation and perspective building (time-space-event) to enrich history teaching.

 

Following practices are recommended:

 

1.     Inclusion of project based learning in formative assessment- while doing projects, students get a chance to explore historical events and the learning space to acquire critical thinking skills

2.     Ability to process information:  acquiring information, organizing information (classifying, analysing, synthesizing, summarizing), Using information (interpreting, evaluating, decision making)

3.     Emphasis on Activities to promote enquiry in History.

4.     Interpersonal relations and social participation which can lead to empathy and harmony: Interaction with community elders and field visits ranging from the neighbourhood to different states. For this objectives at Jnana Prabodhini we have activities like Samaj Darshan, Matrubhumi Parichaya Shibir, etc.

5.     Comparative chronology can be made an integral part of Textbooks so that students can reflect upon national progress by studying century wise concurrent events in other continents and societies.

6.     Comprehensive and Continuous teacher training programmes for Innovative pedagogy should be conducted with focus on history.

 

 The next aspect in history teaching is designing learning material i.e. reorganizing textbook design, supplementary reading book design and worksheet design. . This is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design and sequence of a book into a coherent unit. For this we reorganize textbooks as per objectives of history learning.

For designing learning material, we think of about the order of the curriculum and digitization. 

 

Sharing few ideas and practices:

1.     The curriculum of history can be organized in an ascending order. The scope of the curriculum should grow with the growth of the sphere of experience of students from local to global. At Jnana Prabodhini we involve local historians, curators and community elders in this process.

2.     In the digital age, history textbooks should go beyond text/ printed form. Digitization is needed to make them attractive and dynamic with audio-visuals and QR codes. Institution can add appendix pages to the textbook.

3.     Institution can have webpages or digital platforms should consist of games and simulations modelled to trigger the interest of students in history learning.

4.     In designing supplementary learning material we are trying to invite and collaborate people experts from three fields:

 

a.     The content experts will decide upon the overall content of the learning material, how it has to be distributed amongst the standards, how regional content can be specified for different regions etc. It also can classify and grade supplementary reading material.   

b.     The pedagogy experts will decide what key educational processes can be associated with the content that is to be taken to students. It can evolve and experiment on the development of unique pedagogical methods in view of the objectives placed in this submission.

c.     The third area is technical experts like the expertise of software engineers, artists, film-makers to help design of learning material for the 21^st century. Mechanism for strong collaborations between these three parts can be created.

 

 At Jnana Prabodhini, to organize instructional model of history teaching-learning in nutshell instructor have to work on five main aspects

a.     Learning experiences to imbibe constitutional values

b.     Multi-disciplinary approach

c.     Regional discourses of history

d.     Inclusion of narratives of marginalized & aspiring sectors of society

e.     Adoption of new technology to make history learning joyful

Write-up by

Prashant Divekar, Nachiket Nitsure & Madhura Kashikar