Teachers’ Pedagogy and Conceptions of History: Decolonizing and Transforming History in Elementary

Abstract

Educators‟ teaching practices matter more than the formal curriculum. Therefore, it is important to understand the factors that affect their decisions on what and how to teach a particular subject. This study described elementary teachers‟ conceptions of history and analyzed how these influence their pedagogy. In addition to this, issues that emerged from these conceptions and pedagogy were identified. The findings of this research were used to develop a pedagogical approach that intends to improve the teaching of history in elementary. In-depth informant interviews were conducted with four public elementary school teachers in Metro Manila, Philippines. Results revealed that teachers‟ conceptions of history influence the content and skills that they value in their instruction. Moreover, critical issues related to the teaching of Philippine history were identified: (1) propagation of uncritical and colonial history, (2) the lack of cognitively engaged pedagogy, and (3) teachers‟ limited knowledge in history and pedagogy. This study recommends the teacher education institutions to strengthen the disciplinal knowledge of future educators and the schools to implement the proposed Kasaysayang Bayan approach to decolonize and transform the teaching of history in the Philippines.