Mario Carretero

Historical representations and conflicts about indigenous people as national identities

The relation between history learning processes, in and out of school, and the construction of national identities is nowadays an increasingly important topic, being studied through the appropriation of historical narratives, which are frequently based on the official history of any nation state. In this paper, college students’ historical representations of their nation’s origin are studied. We compared specific quantitative answers about who the first inhabitants of Argentina were with more in depth qualitative answers about their nation’s political origin. In this respect, a conflict has been found in the way students present the official narrative. This conflict consists of maintaining that natives were the first national inhabitants, while most of the students think their nation was created in the 19th century. Different reactions to this are analyzed, particularly students’ efforts to justify this conflict and to find coherency in historical content which has been produced by school history teaching and other sources and consumed by college students. The most common justifications include cultural tools that conceal the violence historically suffered by the natives, and at the same time an unreal conciliation between natives’ rights and the interests of western founders of the national state. These tensions are considered in light of sociocultural discussions about the differences between production and consumption of historical narratives and their appropriation. We uphold that consumed historical narratives are based on an ontological and ahistorical concept of one’s own nation, which prevents understanding a possible counternarrative based on natives as historical agents.

Comprensión de conceptos históricos durante la adolescencia

ResumenEn este articulo se plantea una discusion acerca de la teoria e investigaciones mas relevantes sobre el desarrollo de la comprension de la historia en el nino. Desde una perspectiva piagetiana se estudian los procesos cognitivos involucrados en la realizacion de tareas historicas. Se exponen los resultados de una investigacion sobre 175 ninos acerca de la comprension de conceptos utilizados comunmente en la ensenanza de la Historia y una segunda investigacion sobre 695 ninos acerca de la comprension y uso de la nocion de tiempo cronologico. Los resultados ponen de manifiesto la gran dificultad de este tipo de tareas y su evolucion con la edad.

Conquest or Reconquest? Students’ Conceptions of Nation Embedded in a Historical Narrative

This article focuses on university students’ understanding of the concept of nation. First an analysis of this concept from a historiographical point of view is presented. This allows for distinguishing between different conceptions of the nation related to 3 main approaches: the romantic, the modernist, and the ethnosymbolic approaches. Based on this analysis and also taking into account present research about history education and the construction of national identities, 5 different dimensions of the concept are presented: (a) historical subject, (b) identification, (c) territory, (d) legitimate claim, and (e) general concept scheme. Qualitative individual interviews were carried out with 31 Spanish college students about a Spanish foundational historical narrative, embedding the concept of nation, called the Reconquest (711 ad–1495 ad). Results indicated that although students showed tensions in their narratives, romantic conceptions dominated most of them. Possible reasons for the existence of these views are analyzed in terms of how the concept of nation is presented in and out of school. Also, implications for teaching and learning this concept are discussed, looking at learning strategies that could improve the understanding of this concept through its 5 analyzed dimensions.

El adolescente como historiador

ResumenEste articulo presenta una investigacion sobre el desarrollo del pensamiento hipotetico-deductivo en tareas historicas. Se trata de una habilidad fundamental para dominar situaciones historicas complejas, tan frecuentes en los libros de texto. Los resultados muestran un escaso dominio de esta habilidad por parte de los adolescentes. Se analizan las causas y las implicaciones educativas de esta falta de pensamiento historico cientifico.

Telling a national narrative that is not your own. Does it enable critical historical consumption

National narratives are a key element in the process of history consumption and production. These master narratives have been analyzed in both theoretical and empirical studies as general schematic templates producing an essentialist and nationalist representation of the own past. The majority of studies examining historical representations of national narratives have used historical content of the students’ own nation. This study, on the other hand, analyzed the historical understanding of 34 Spanish university students concerning three dimensions of historical narratives about a nation other than their own. These dimensions were: the establishment of the historical subject, the moral judgment about the national group actions, and the legitimacy of the ownership of the territory. The distinction among three different dimensions is presented as providing a better both theoretical and empirical comprehension of master narratives as sociocultural devices. Our results indicated that participants had a more critical representation about the second and third mentioned features, whereas they had a romantic conception about the first one, suggesting then that the establishment of the historical subject could be the core dimension of the master narrative. Finally, some considerations about the process of history consumption and its relations to national identity are presented.

“Aquí vemos a Colón llegando a América”. Desarrollo cognitivo e interpretación de imágenes históricas

Resumen Las lecturas de imágenes en el contexto de la enseñanza de la historia plantean interesantes problemas que hemos abordado desde la perspectiva de la psicología cognitiva. Hemos estudiado las interpretaciones que los sujetos generan en las lecturas de las imágenes. Para ello realizamos un estudio comparativo en el que sujetos de diferentes edades (12, 14, 16 años y adultos) y países de procedencia (Argentina, Chile y España) interpretaban un conocido grabado de T. de Bry (siglo XVII) sobre el Descubrimiento de América. Los resultados indican que los sujetos más jóvenes, en los tres países por igual, tienen dificultades para realizar una comprensión contextualizada de la imagen, como producto histórico y realizan lecturas simples y literales de la misma. En vista de estos resultados, se discute la necesidad de introducir claves que mejoren la interpretación de estas fuentes históricas, tanto en los libros de texto como en la intervención didáctica en el aula.

Commentary on Brockmeier’s remapping memory: The relation between past, present and future as a metaphor of memory

A commentary of Jens Brockmeier’s paper “Remapping memory” (2010) is presented. Also, a number of relations to previous commentaries about the same paper are presented. First, we agree with Brockmeier and Haye with respect to the artificial and useless separation of memory and other psychological functions. On the other hand, five implicit assumptions of the archive model, criticized by Brockmeier, are presented. These assumptions are considered to raise the issue of the need to incorporate a more complex relation of past, present and future, in order to have a better understanding of memory phenomena. The importance of this relation is developed in relation to both collective memory and history teaching, and also in relation to autobiographical memory.

Cómo enseñar el pasado para entender el presente: Observaciones sobre la didáctica de la historia

ResumenEn los trabajos anteriores hemos presentado una serie de investigaciones cuyos resultados muestran las grandes dificultades que tienen los adolescentes para comprender problemas historicos complejos. ?Es posible superar dichas dificultades mediante una instruccion adecuada? En este articulo se resumen sin animo de exhaustividad, diversos intentos recientes llevados a cabo con este fin, que suponen una propuesta de renovacion de la ensenanza de la historia tanto en EGB como en BUP.

Signal Effects on the Recall and Understanding of Expository Texts in Expert and Novice Readers

A primary goal of reading is to understand the writer’s message correctly. To accomplish this goal, a reader must identify the information in the text that is most relevant to the author’s message. A writer can facilitate the reader’s task by using a variety of devices to signal relevant information. In the present study, we investigated the effects of signals on text comprehension and recall in different groups. Subjects were 48 Experts (post-graduate students) and 96 Novices (48 good readers and 48 poor readers, junior high school students). All subjects read two expository texts at different levels of difficulty. There were two versions for each text: with signals and without signals. Two recall tests were run: immediate free recall and delayed free recall. The results demonstrated that signals directed attention to the macrostructure they marked and led to a better encoding of the organization of target information in all groups. This effect increased with the difficulty of the text and the skill of the reader.

¿Por qué prospera un país?: un análisis cognitivo de las explicaciones en historia

ResumenEn el presente trabajo se analizan los requisitos cognitivos necesarios para alcanzar los dos tipos de explicacion que suelen admitirse en la historia y en las ciencias sociales: la causal y la intencional. Se estudian tambien las diferencias entre ambas y los sesgos propios de cada una de ellas. Se presenta, ademas, una investigacion realizada con sujetos adolescentes en la que se muestran las dificultades para acceder a una explicacion causal que integre los distintos aspectos de la realidad historica. Estas dificultades no se superan hasta los diecisiete-dieciocho anos y no en todos los casos.