Primary and secondary school teachers’ perceptions of their social science training needs

Abstract

Competency-based education is one of the challenges currently faced by social science teachers. At present, there is an abundance of research on competencies relating to the social sciences which favour the development of historical thinking among learners. The ongoing training of teachers is of vital importance when it comes to shifting the method of teaching towards approaches which focus more on the learner, which favour the teaching of historical contents and competences aimed at forming a critical citizenship. For this reason, the two objectives of this study are to discover which disciplinary contents are considered by teachers to be most relevant for the teaching of history and what training is required by teachers who give social science classes in primary and secondary education in Spain. The research is a non-experimental mixed-methods study. In order to achieve the first objective, a quantitative analysis has been carried out of the data obtained from a questionnaire with a Likert-type scale administered to 332 primary and secondary teachers in Spain. To achieve the second objective, the information obtained from 12 interviews with primary and secondary school teachers in Spain has been analysed in a qualitative way. The results obtained indicate that teachers update their disciplinary knowledge via scientific journals and that they are interested in receiving training in historical thinking skills, active learning methods and ICT resources. Based on these training needs, it is concluded that teachers currently envisage a teaching model in the social sciences which is more competency-based and focused on the active participation of the learner.