Browsing by Author "Manninen, Marika"

The aim of this thesis was to find out what kind of literacy skills are needed in studying history and how these skills could be taught. The focus of history teaching has moved from emphasizing content knowledge towards skill-oriented teaching. Skill-oriented teaching includes the idea of working like a researcher of history. By studying primary and secondary references the students themselves learn to compile historical information: they have to evaluate the information available and match even contradictory interpretations from past events. Studying historical documents requires genre-related knowledge and skills. However, according to many studies the objectives set for school History in the curriculum have not been fulfilled. Transforming the traditional way of teaching history to meet the objectives set by the curriculum has proven to be challenging, because working based on document examination requires cutting down contents and a teacher familiar with teaching historical thinking. This study connects methods needed for both teaching literacy skills and teaching document skills, and based on these a pedagogical model is created, which allows the teacher to concentrate on the teaching of literacy skills particularly needed in history. This study utilized features from design-based research. The starting point for the study was the detection of a practical problem. The study advanced from defining and analysing a theoretical didactic problem for developing a didactic artefact corresponding to a practical problem. The iterative testing process belonging to a typical design-based research was not included in this study at this stage because of the restrictions set by the extent of a master's thesis. The last element of this study is practical. Another end product of this study besides the description of a literacy skills teaching process is a learning material intended for teaching literacy skills. The literacy skills teaching process developed in this study is applied in this material, in which the legend of the first crusade is explored by the means of investigating source documents. The learning material developed in this study offers opportunities for integrating the teaching of history and mother tongue. Testing and developing this learning material according to the principles of design-based research give reason for further study.