Matthias Wider„Man muss es gesehen haben, um es zu verstehen“ – Zur Wirkung von historischen Orten auf Schülerinnen und Schüler

About this book deutschenglish

History teachers know it from experience: Excursion teaching is something special. Also history didactics assumes a whole range of benefits for the learning at historic sites: it can be "experienced” and it is "multi-sensory", "multi-channel", "authentic", "motivating", "tangible". In short, the students would simply be "somehow closer" to the past.

However, these benefits have neither been well defined nor empirically substantiated so far. The present study addresses this issue by taking up the question of whether and to what extent historical learning at historical places actually generates a didactic "added value" and whether it is actually qualitatively superior to classroom teaching. Using the example of three theoretical well-founded cases (“Geschehensort” former Bad Boll”, “Erinnerungsort” Hartmannsweilerkopf and “Gedenkort” Natzweiler Struthof) an evaluation of student texts (samples of memory protocols) makes visible, how typical excursion teaching affects students.

The study determines which internal and external factors are of importance during the learning at historic places and to what extent and in what manner these factors shape the historical learning. It also shows how these factors interrelate to each other and how they work together in the process of historical learning. The analysis leads towards to a series of in-depth recommendations for the professionalization of the practice of the historical excursion.