Introduction

Our interest in the subject discussed in this paper arose from a remark by Paulina ^{Latapí (2014)} that research into the field of the teaching of history has developed with little integration, which led us to think that a review and synthesis effort would be a step forward in that direction.

Based on what Josefina ^{Granja (2000)} pointed out, we use the concept ‘shaping’ (configuración) and adopt an analytic position that seeks to understand the continuities, displacements and reorganizations experienced over time around a number of theoretical and methodological elaborations by a number of scholars who name, explain and understand a given segment of reality. Accounting for this process involves creating a relational field among producers, products and addressees, in a dynamic in which ideas and proposals are circulated and recreated in situations of tension, displacement, or condensation, all of which shapes, precisely, a field of knowledge. This perspective allows us to maintain that part of the complexity and particularity of making a state of the knowledge about the teaching and learning of history lies in the fact that there are communicating vessels between the development of perspectives and the generation of teaching policies and didactic proposals, since in this field of knowledge we work with notions that are adapted to be taught.

To sketch the outlines of this paper we have defined two lines of analysis: a) the approaches to the teaching of history that emerged from educational psychology, didactics, and history, and b) the proposals that have emanated from these approaches and some of their effects on teacher training models, curricular design and the creation of educational materials. These threads are interwoven in three stages, which have also served to structure our presentation. The first one addresses the gestation of the field of the teaching of history dominated by genetic psychology. In the second one we explain how, starting in the 1980s and through didactics, bridges were built between psychological theory and teaching in the classroom, and in the third we present more recent debate and approaches of what has been known as historical research and research into the teaching of history.

Methodologically, we reviewed publications in specialized books and journals about the approaches made from the middle of the twentieth century to the present through the educational psychology, didactics, and history cores of production, in order to comprehend the implications of such research on some teaching proposals. As for the space-time dimension of this paper, we founded it on our reflections on how, when, and where knowledge was generated on the teaching and learning of history, in order to discern the possible impact they had in Mexico.

The gestation (1960- 1980)

For ^{Sebastián Plá (2012)}, the field of research into the teaching of history began with Piaget’s postulates about the development of the notions of time in a child. This development consisted of a succession of stages¹ associated to a gradual increase in the individual’s explanatory complexity (^{Fairsten & Carretero, 2001: 181}). ^{Hervás and Miralles (2006)} point out that thanks to this genetic theory it was possible to reflect on temporality, a fundamental notion for the teaching of history. It was argued that this notion was part of complex thought associated to successive restructuring processes linked to the individual’s maturing stages. Based on this, it was claimed that cognitive maturity about temporality would be reached in an almost “natural” way, and the learning of contents would be a direct way to shape such thinking.

Over time it was recognized that research conducted under this perspective was somewhat biased, since it was based on an almost literal reading of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, and studies revealed that few children were able to master the temporal notions that were “adequate” to their age. This, according to ^{Santiesteban (2017)}, was due to the fact that Piaget’s ideas were mechanically transposed to the classroom without considering other qualitative factors for learning such as the subjectivity of temporal notions in regard to how people live, which involves taking into account that concepts created about time are framed within a diversity of contexts and experiences.

This questioning was part of the debate started in the Woods Hole Lectures conducted at the MIT in 1959. Among the topics discussed there was the relationship between development and evolutionary stages, a concern of the European delegates. The second topic, which concerned the United States delegates, was how to speed up the stages of development. In both cases Piaget’s ideas were questioned, or rather how they had been applied almost literally, which raised the need to reflect not only on the child’s natural evolutionary development but also on the influence of the teacher and the curricula. This focus ran parallel to the movement towards cognitivism, an approach that developed in the context of the Cold War. Governments supported this research for political reasons, seeking to accelerate the training of an intellectual force that had an impact on economic development (^{Díaz, 1999}).

But what was the influence of both approaches on the teaching of history? The American position, represented by Jerome Bruner, gave rise to the cognitive revolution. He argued that “the student must not speak about physics, history, or mathematics […] but do physics, history, math, [since] the knowledge actually acquired is that which is rediscovered” (^{Bruner, 1963: 247}, quoted by ^{Guilar, 2009: 23}). From this standpoint, learning was defined as an active process of association, construction, and representation.

Learners should experiment and emulate the work of scientists through a spiral curriculum,² which would gradually increase knowledge by broadening understanding and cognitive ability. Thus, ^{Bruner (1963)} proposed bringing the methodology of science into the classroom through a process of discovery, which meant working on classroom subjects by imitating scientific procedures.

In Europe, meanwhile, there was more interest in understanding the passage from one stage to the next and the process involved. This led thinkers such as Dennis Shemilt to search for a relationship between evolutionary positions and cognitive development (^{Duckworth, 1981}) in England in 1972. The goal was to inquire into “how humans construct knowledge in the context of the interaction between the individual and the environment: […] how knowledge increases, how it is transformed through successive adjustments, and how these adjustments progress from a lower to a higher level; i.e. from sensorimotor to formal thought” (^{Díaz, 1999: 217}).

Research conducted from this standpoint inquired into whether teenage students were able to understand some notions of the discipline when they emulated the work of historians. Thus, curricular proposals were developed to include historical epistemology and its methodology so that students could understand both the logic and the methods and perspectives of the discipline (Lamoneda, 1988). These proposals were designed adopting the principles of the French Annales school: the problem of history, the use of different primary sources, a relative withdrawal from political history, and the emergence of social and economic issues.³

In this context, Dennis Shemilt conducted Project 13-16 in England with the support of the School Council, a government-subsidized body in charge of developing curricula for middle school. His aim was to analyze the meaning of the subject of History in middle and high school. Among the conclusions of his research were the need to teach history as a form of complex knowledge, and the realization that only after adolescence do students have the cognitive maturity to study it. He also recommended taking into consideration the cognitive maturity of students to set up appropriate strategies, and promoting historical empathy so students could identify with the characters and the times (^{Lamoneda, 1998}).⁴

Reforms to education in several countries in the 1970s and 1980s echoed the results and recommendations of this research. In Spain, for instance, there was a profound reform of education that modified plans and programs for basic levels and for teacher training, which was raised to the level of higher education and was offered by universities, and also led to the creation of centers for educational research.

At the University of Valencia, for example, the Germania 75 group was born, calling into question the positivist approach to the teaching of history in middle school and proposing strategies based on the didactic knowledge available (^{Salles, 2011}). At the University of Barcelona, the theoretical approach was oriented towards the psychogenetic of the English school of thought. Project 13-16 was replicated under the name Historia 13-16, led by Prats. Their research was grounded on the advancements in psycho-pedagogy and guided by Bruner’s method of discovery, with the aim of teaching the students basic techniques of historians that allowed them to have a better understanding of historical knowledge and become “critical, free and responsible citizens” (^{Prats, 1989}, quoted in ^{Salles, 2011}). The project also sought to find out how history is learned, under the assumption that this process involves a particular way of acquiring knowledge. Their conclusions were similar to those of the English project: that in adolescence it is possible for some students both to understand historical methodology and to apply some aspects of a historian’s work in the classroom (^{Fairstein & Carretero, 2001}; ^{Salles, 2011}). Besides the influence of the English project on the project Historia 13-16, another key influence was that of French historiography, whose referents served as a foundation by placing less emphasis on the contents and promoting, through successive approach, learning about historical research.

Based on what we have shown so far we may infer that research on the teaching and learning of history achieved a certain degree of institutionalization in universities, which can be observed in the development of projects in specialized centers and researchers working on this task. In Spain, research in the 1970s and 1980s gave way to specific didactics, with history being included in the didactics of social science. In the curricular reforms of the 1990s, in the context of the Law for the General Organization of the Educational System (Ley de Ordenación General del Sistema Educativo), the specific didactics were part of the plans and programs of study for teacher training as well as the proposals for basic education (^{Pagès, 1994} y ²⁰¹²; ^{Prats & Valls, 2011}).

What happened in Mexico? Here, it was the historians themselves who approached research into the teaching of history and participated in curricular reforms and the creation of textbooks. In the 1970s, an important group of scholars from El Colegio de México helped to write the new history textbooks for elementary schools by broadening their contents beyond those of political history and articulating them in increasing levels of complexity. The importance of textbooks in Mexico must not be underestimated. The fact that they are free to students and compulsory in every school in the country makes them a powerful instrument for the irradiation of knowledge, as well as the central material for teaching and learning, especially in places where access to written culture is mediated almost exclusively by the school.

In spite of the changes in books and their contents, the pedagogical foundations of plans and programs of study had little to do with the contributions of genetic and cognitive pedagogy, and emulating the work of historians was almost absent from them. Elementary and middle school programs were based on a fundamentally behaviorist educational technology. Additionally, teacher training and practice continued to employ the traditional ways to teach history: lectures by the teacher, followed by drafting summaries and answering questionnaires.

To summarize, we may say that, in this first stage, research into the teaching of history in the United States and Europe tried to answer three questions: How are temporal notions formed? At which stage of their development can students best learn historical knowledge? Is it possible to accelerate the acquisition of historical knowledge, and how? The knowledge produced had an impact on the creation of new curricular design and educational materials oriented towards fostering teaching based on social and economic rather than political contents, on trying to set aside the memorization of dates in order to understand historical processes in a comprehensive way, and on using historians’ research methods. In Mexico there were some attempts, mostly to transform school contents and try out some didactic innovations.

In spite of all the research, reforms, didactic suggestions and design of new books, such proposals met with little success in classrooms and traditional teaching based on content and memorization continued, exposing a mismatch between what the scholars pointed out and what happened in reality. The different school environments had an influence on the application of the innovations, with the school actors (teachers, students, administrators) and communities as the main opponents. Thus, in the 1990s some of the concerns of researchers were why reforms fail, what happens with teachers, how parents, school administrators and environments constrain the operation of reforms, and whether it is possible to formulate specific didactics for the teaching of a given discipline.

The didactics of history (1990-2000)

Starting in the 1980s, research in the teaching of history underwent a number of displacements in its problems and objects of interest, which gained force in the following years and are part of broader trends in which educational psychology and didactics were also involved. As we have pointed out, one of these displacements revolved around explaining why reforms fail, added to a concern to understand the role of teachers as mediators in curricular changes and how their frameworks of reference are involved in their teaching. The second displacement arose from thinking of the curricula as social and historical constructions, which led to reflect on their normative and operational dimensions through specific didactics (^{Pagès, 1994}; ^{Prats & Valls, 2011}).

In this context, research in the United States highlighted the role of local actors as agents who mediate in, resist, negotiate, or oppose reforms, in order to understand why pedagogical reforms and innovations based on cognitivism were seldom present in classrooms. In this respect, ^{Casanova & Berliner (1997)} point out that cognitivism had a strong impact on educational research focused on processes of knowledge formation. However, its introduction into schools was slow. ^{Barry Franklyn’s (1991)} research showed that at a local level authorities, teachers and parents hindered educational transformations in the teaching of history and social sciences. Franklyn cites ^{McKinney & Westbury’s (1975)} pioneering study of three attempts of reform in the city of Gary, Indiana between 1940 and 1970 which had little or short-lived impact due to the scarce support of local actors, little funding, and lack of materials and infrastructure.

A second line of research consisted of problematizing on the cultural aspects involved in the teaching of history vis-à-vis the formation of temporal notions and development. Theoretical reflection led to consider higher psychological functions, one of Vigotsky’s key concepts, which allowed researchers to debate on historical and cultural aspects, language, and social interaction as mediators in learning processes. This changed the view of evolutionary development formulated by Piaget into a view of development as a process immersed in social dynamics. Vigotsky’s (1979) ideas pervaded the disciplines until then associated in a slightly unclear way to research on the teaching of history: evolutionary psychology, history, and didactics.⁵

In Spain, these displacements were present in the work of ^{Prats and Valls (2011)}, both research professors at the University of Barcelona. In the mid-1980s, they participated in the questioning of the psychogenetic view and underscored the importance of culture and the student’s environment in the teaching and learning of history. Such criticism was based on a review of evolutionary positions compared to what research within the classroom showed. They sought to ground the didactics of history on the advancements proposed by sociocultural theories, a theoretical perspective from which a number of postulates emerged. The first one had to do with how the teaching of history involved not only the study subject’s content but also a know-how, since “different materials contexts and situations demand different types of thought” (^{Booth, 1987}, cited by ^{Carretero & Limón, 1993: 157}). A second postulate consisted of a claim that historical knowledge is a specific type of thought, with “its own logic, methods and perspectives” (^{Shemilt, 1987}, cited in ^{Carretero & Limón, 1993: 155}). Thirdly, they pointed out the importance of linking theoretical reflection to the evidence of what took place in the classroom (^{Carretero & Limón, 1993: 155}).

New questions emerged from those postulates: What type of thought is historical knowledge specifically? How can it be taught? In search of answers, scholars began working on new lines of research inserted in the specific didactics of social science and history.⁶ Their main focus of interest was how to build mediations between the discipline’s knowledge and the student, i.e., how to “school-ize” historical knowledge taking into account students’ contexts and psychological development, which required designing strategies that made it comprehensible and apprehensible.

These concerns were also addressed by some historians. Such was the case of ^{Jacques Le Goff and Antonio Santoni (1996)}, who in a text that was widely circulated in Mexico invited to a dialog among historians, pedagogues and anyone interested in the teaching of history in order to reflect on the cultural and formative importance of this discipline with the aim of creating a common program and language. To do this, they pointed out that it was necessary for young people to understand how history is constructed by imitating the goals, questions, methods, and resources used by historians. The teacher, in turn, should learn about historiographic arguments.

These ideas and debates also had a resonance in Mexico. This can be observed, for example, in the Congress promoted by Victoria Lerner and held at Mexico’s National Autonomous University in 1988. The papers presented there were organized in three thematic groups: a) The practice of the teaching of history, in which experiences were presented, b) Didactics of history, which focused on proposals, and c) Theoretical reflections, including papers on the relationship between the teaching of this discipline and other social sciences (^{Lerner, 1990}).

This effort found continuity mainly in the work of a salient group of female historians: ^{Victoria Lerner (1990)}, ^{Mireya Lamoneda (1998)}, ^{Luz Elena Galván (2006)}, and ^{Andrea Sánchez (2006)} denounced the fact that traditional ways of teaching persisted in schools, and pointed out that it was necessary to bring the work of the historian and the knowledge of history into schools. They also incorporated into their concerns the pedagogical debates held in Spain, and offered didactic proposals.

These scholars emphasized that teaching should take into consideration the students’ context as a way of approaching cognitive standpoints. In particular, ^{Lamoneda (1998)} pointed out that adolescence was theoretically assumed to be a stage of consolidation of abstract thought and transition into more mature ways of thinking such as understanding the complexity of time and space, but the experience of teachers showed that students hardly ever appropriated such concepts. In her view, this problem stemmed from an absence of contents and strategies that allowed them to relate what they had learned to their environment, so she suggested using specific mediators in order to create bridges between historical knowledge and the students. These mediators should take into account the fact that historical knowledge has its own formal nature, which requires certain specificities in order to be taught and learned.

Mexican historians such as ^{Luis González y González (1998)} and ^{Hira de Gortari (1998)}, closer to the work of historical research than to the psychological and didactic foundations for its teaching, proposed starting from problem questions and using historical sources in the classrooms in order to bring the student closer to the historian’s methods and generate critical learning. They both called into question the teaching of history. However, their ideas were based on problems they had observed in the practice of education and their experience as historians, without any systematic research to support their ideas.

By the late 1990s, research into education was growing in Mexico and research into specific didactics was visible, as was observed by the Mexican Council of Educational Research (COMIE, Consejo Mexicano de Investigación Educativa). In the field of the teaching of history, Luz Elena Galván participated in the creation of the first states of knowledge that comprise the 1980s and perspectives for the 1990s.^{7 Paulina Latapí (2014)} points out that thanks to the work done in Mexico until then, the importance of mapping out the field of the teaching of history, its theoretical and methodological conceptualization, as well as the need for further formal research work could be seen more clearly.

As for the curricular reforms that took place in Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s, the current educational technology was called into question and the didactics of history and social sciences were disseminated with the aim of bringing the discipline’s knowledge into the classrooms. They also sought to disseminate the method of history and concepts such as temporal sequencing, cause and effect links, spatial locations, formulating questions, and using sources. Based on this, basic education plans and programs, textbooks and teacher’s support materials, as well as the training in teachers’ colleges, were modified. Although these displacements had a resonance in curricular designs, there have not been many studies that inquire into what happened in practice, nor research into how history teachers were trained in those decades. In this respect, ^{Alanís and Medina (2019: 99)} point out that “pedagogical research and innovations have circulated in academic circles at a certain pace, while their adoption in concrete school experiences has been very limited”.

The debates that took place in the period analyzed in this section led to rethink research into the teaching of history, placing didactics in a preponderant position. Thus, acknowledging the importance of sociocultural aspects and mediators, and especially language as a fundamental tool of teaching and learning processes, justified the creation of specific didactics centered on designing bridges between the discipline’s knowledge and its teaching and learning. This position was supported by the assumption that “speech is recognized as an instrument, an intermediary to higher thought” (^{Patiño, 2007: 55}). Moreover, at the beginning of the twenty-first century the conditions existed to try to integrate educational psychology, the historian’s methodology and the didactics of the teaching of history, a process that involved both a theoretical and a methodological restructuring of the field of research into the teaching of history that is still in progress.

Mexico: recent debate and contributions

As a consequence of the economic, social, and political changes brought about by the end of the Cold War, our ways of understanding the world were transformed between the last years of the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first. ^{Carlos Díaz (1999)} points out that knowledge and technology became the cornerstones of a “society of knowledge”, as the engines of both economic production and the generation of wealth. Education was seen as a relevant mechanism to generate a human capital to attend to the new challenges of production. This was caused by the fact that, due to the speed of changes, detailed and specific knowledge becomes less relevant, and an emphasis is placed on the role of education to attain the development of flexible abilities and skills that allow the individual to be prepared for a society of knowledge by having a permanent disposition for learning. The problem was how to achieve it.⁸

In this context, debates about the teaching of history experienced some displacements. A first set of questions was linked to the tradition of specific didactics and practical concerns: Which are the skills required to achieve long-lasting historical thought? Which mediations or strategies would be required? What should teachers know and do to enable the learning of history? A second set had to do with the need to carry out systematic, rigorous and in-depth research, which leads us to postulate the complexity of the object of study known as the teaching of history, as well as to propose interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches.

These two tendencies may be referred to, following ^{Plá (2005}, ²⁰⁰⁸, ²⁰¹²⁾, as historical education and research into the teaching of history. The first one emphasizes pedagogical and didactic research, prioritizes applied research, tests proposals, analyzes results, and proposes methods, strategies and means of teaching and learning for the shaping of historical thought. Research into the teaching of history, on the other hand, is more interested in understanding the many processes and realities of this object of study, as well as its meanings, why is why it emphasizes the roles of actors, their productions, and the context.

Plá’s proposal of these two fields of research took place amidst a growing interest in the teaching of history, which can be observed in an increase of theses on the subject,⁹ in the curricular transformations of teacher training, and in the emergence and strengthening of research networks. On the latter, ^{Latapí (2014)} points out that the Mexican Association for Research into the Didactics of History (AMIEDH, Asociación Mexicana de Investigación en Didáctica de la Historia) was created in 2000, seeking to link research to teaching practice.¹⁰ In turn, the National Network of Specialists in History Teaching, Diffusion and Research (REDDIEH, Red Nacional de Especialistas en Docencia, Difusión e Investigación en la Enseñanza de la Historia) was created following the colloquia on the teaching of history organized in 2006 by Hugo Torres, in close collaboration with the National Network of Bachelors’ Degree Programs in History and their Academic Boards (RENALIHCA, Red Nacional de Licenciaturas en Historia y sus Cuerpos Académicos).

The creation of these collectives propitiated a space for encounters where heterogeneity of ideas, concerns, and proposals, an intercrossing of thematic issues, academic debate, and the integration of some positions can coexist. The eight encounters held by REDDIEH may be seen as a reference of what is taking place in different higher education institutions associated with the teaching of history. It now includes not only specialists from Mexico, but also from other countries such as Spain, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Cuba.¹¹ Among the issues discussed are a significant number of research projects on teaching practice and novel approaches, for instance about the theory of social representations and teachers’ beliefs. The number of projects that could be included in the research areas proposed by Plá - historical education and research into the teaching of history - has increased in the last decade. For this reason, we will now review these two lines of research.

Final thoughts

Answering the question of how the field of knowledge of the teaching and learning of history was shaped led us to map a territory where we located some of the participants in that journey and retraced their steps in order to learn about their ideas and proposals. Like any outline, our work is but a sketch, leaving images and lines to be defined around, for example, what traces the different attempts at reform left in the classroom and how they were received by teachers, what particular differences historical knowledge at school has from other social sciences, and how the processes of appropriation of conceptual, procedural and attitudinal contents proposed in historical education take place in specific contexts. We also believe further systematic and well-grounded research involving the design, practice and evaluation of didactic proposals is needed. In spite of all these pending matters, we believe that what we have presented in this document help to shed light on some of the main journeys and displacements involved in the process of shaping the field of research into the teaching and learning of history.

Another pending matter is to increase the dialog among historians, experts on research into the teaching of history, and teachers. We believe it is time to promote more horizontal and collaborative research, to further enrich each other and shed light on, for instance, what happens in the teaching and learning of history in different contexts and at different levels, how teachers and students appropriate first and second order concepts, whether historical awareness can be taught and learned, how it is constructed, and what the role of contexts, individuals, and institutional cultures is in that construction. There is also much left to be done and understood in regard to the use of information and communication technologies in the management of historical education, or rather in regard to the effects of these technologies on the fragmentation or loss of meaning of individual and local histories, and the effects of these processes on the construction of collective identities. At any rate, we believe that learning to think historically contributes to generating in individuals a critical consciousness and provides them with tools for reflection, which requires that the field of research into the teaching of history continue to be strengthened and to promote interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary debate.