Narrating “Histories of Spain”. Student teachers and the construction of national narratives

Abstract

This study analyses the role of Spanish teacher training students as narrators of what they consider to be the history of Spain. Results of this empirical study are based on a random sample of 103 narratives produced by trainee primary education teachers (20-22 years of age) studying at the University of Murcia. We are interested in understanding the role of students as agents of historical knowledge. Recent research in history education has stressed the need to vindicate the active role of students in the creation of historical narratives. How do students construct their accounts of history? How do they reflect narratives of school-taught history? Their narratives always reveal certain forms and skills employed to represent the past. This study focuses on this perspective. We have analysed their extra-curricular knowledge (family, social environments, mass media and other cultural products such as TV series, videogames, websites, etc.) and their memories of school history (curriculum, textbooks, teachers) using a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology. Our qualitative methodology is based on grounded theory and, in order to analyse discourse, we have used quantitative methodology with the analysis of key events and historical figures present in the narrative, in an attempt to categorise second order concepts and sources of historical knowledge. In the results, essentialist and traditional representations of this historical knowledge can be appreciated. Reported major events are related to a traditional political reading of history and linked to genesis and nation-building events: showing heroes and antiheroes of a national narrative. Regarding the sources of knowledge, teachers’ explanations, textbooks and museums are the factors most valued by students