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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Learning History implies the acquisition of historical and social concepts, analyzing its mutual relationships
in the explanation of historical change. The
comprehension of Industrial Revolution in England requires
the use of at least four main concepts: Agrarian
Revolution, Demographic Increase, Technological Innovations
and the need of Accumulated Capital. The
understanding of these concepts and the establishment
of its relationships is a quite demanding cognitive task.
Therefore, the crucial role of working memory in
these cognitive processes is hypothesized. This paper presents a study on the teaching and
learning of this subject matter by first-grade of high
school subjects. The main objective of this study was
to analyze the process of understanding and acquisition
of this complex subject, testing the influence of
three variables: working memory capacity, prior
knowledge and attitude for meaningful learning. Pretest
examined subject’s knowledge of some basic concepts
and their ability to describe and explain the phenomenon,
as well as to summarize and comment a text
and to represent their knowledge by means of a concept
map. Differences in working memory capacity
were controlled by means of the reading span test.
Finally, subject’s attitude for meaningful learning was
tested on line using an observation record. Teaching
was developed during 6 classes following the usual
scheme and methodology focused on reaching a gradual
and overall understanding of the phenomenon.
Learning results were checked in a post-test where we
used the same test than before. There was a highly
significant increase in all the post-test measures. Students
with higher reading span learnt more and better
than students with lower reading span. Therefore,
working memory seems to play a crucial role when our
subjects are building up historical knowledge as to
Industrial Revolution. The significant correlation
between knowledge in pretest and post-test showed
that pretest scores are a quite good predictor of posttest
ones, as all the cognitive theories held. As to the
attitude, its high correlation with both knowledge
measures (pre and post-test) bears out our prediction
about the relevant role of this variable. Finally the
analysis of subjects concept maps in pretest and posttest
confirmed an improvement on subjects’ organization
of knowledge, increasing its levels of depth and
connectivity.
Description
Keywords
Learning and teaching history Working memory
Citation
Análise Psicológica, 2(17), 241-252.
Publisher
Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada