József Kaposi, Richárd Fodor and Judit Tóth Changes in the Content Regulation of History Education in Hungary in Recent Years in the Light of International Developments - 173
This study describes the characteristic processes of history education in Hungary in recent years in the light of international developments, using documents on the state regulation of the content of such teaching. The focus of the paper is on the changes to the curricula and examination requirements. The authors highlight the professional actors, organizations and innovations that showcase the prestige of the profession of history teaching in Hungary. The paper also covers the preparation and introduction of core standards, changes to development goals, and the content canon of the subject, as well as the emphasis on curricular content, the new approaches, source processing methods and tools that have resulted from these changes. It concludes that centrally generated and directed efforts to change attitudes have had a negative impact on institutional professional autonomy in Hungary, as well as on the development of critical thinking and social responsiveness. The contradictions between the intention to change and the lack of appropriate implementation activities have unfortunately failed to promote a shift in pedagogical culture. Moreover, they have not sufficiently supported the objective of modern history teaching to ensure that future generations possess adequate historical literacy.
Áron Fekete and Barnabás Vajda Visual Heritage: on the Cognitive Role of Some Digitalized School History Maps - 199
Various sorts of digital learning materials are rapidly appearing in large quantities in public education, a process that also involves history as a school subject. In Hungary, such educational materials for the purposes of teaching history can typically be found on two platforms: digital or digitalized school textbooks, or digital content-sharing portals. Our research was triggered by our own teaching experience and our observations that so-called ‘reproductive tasks’, which require nothing but memorization from students, are remarkably common in these digital teaching materials. Thus, most of the questions and tasks linked to cartographical sources aim almost exclusively at the simple localization of historical sites. In this study, our main focus is on the cognitive levels that are represented by the questions and tasks related to digital school history maps in terms of the levels and sophistication of the students’ thinking, their cognitive operations. The aims of our study are twofold: while focusing on questions and tasks related to school history maps, we examine first, what characteristics can be used to describe Hungarian online digital school history maps, and second, what sophisticated questions and tasks are required from students. It is important to note that, even though our research draws on a very limited range of samples, it still aims to dig deeply into a carefully selected set of examples in an attempt to formulate some relevant conclusions.
