About Creativity in History Teaching and Learning

Abstract A high-performing academic education system supports the development of skills such as curiosity and creativity in students’ activities and learning experiences. However, the academic curriculum gives quite a lot of importance to the accumulation of knowledge and the learning of specific skills, which can encourage an education that is less oriented towards the development of creativity and curiosity, especially in the discipline of History. Our study has as target group the 3rd year students of the Pedagogy of Primary and Preschool Education, whom we monitored during two academic years. The purpose of the research is to analyze the effect of the didactic strategy on students’ creative thinking and to show that creativity is a fundamental element for the development of their historical thinking as students and future practitioners. In our approach, we started from the following premises and hypotheses: 1) creativity is present in all learning contexts, although it is not always specified as such; 2) students need to be creative in a constantly changing world that requires us to permanently adapt; 3) outside of those disciplines that explicitly emphasize creativity (fine arts, music etc.) creativity is rarely present in the discussions regarding teaching and learning; 4) if at History we apply a series of strategies to stimulate creative thinking that includes interactive methods, diverse teaching aids and mixed organizational forms which involve cooperation, then students’ creativity, curiosity and interest in this subject will be stimulated. Therefore, we proposed the following objectives: (O1) The implementation of didactic strategies that stimulate students’ creativity; (O2) The analysis of the results - how does the didactic strategy affect creative thinking in the history discipline? (O3) The analysis and evaluation of the effect that the didactic strategy may have on creativity at History. The expected results are, in the case of students, an increase in creativity through the application of certain didactic strategies, motivation for learning and positive attitudes towards history, with the belief that when they become teachers they will apply similar strategies in the classroom.