The Historik Tradition In German Historical Didactics:Splitt And Reconstruction

As one of the dimensions of history’s function,historical didactics used to be an important part of Historik-tradition in Germany.In the scientization of history under historicism in the 19th century,historical didactics and Historik experienced a process of“splitting".With the trend toward normalization and professionalization of historical research,history changed from a writing form based a narrative structure to an independent discipline which had epistemological basis and followed specific methodology.History became a work of sorting,criticizing,and explaining historical materials,while historical didactics was placed outside the scope of historical research as a form of "presentation".Facing the demand for the unification of the nation-state,the content and goals of historical didactics were determined by the state,and served the unification of the nation-state.Its methods were included in the scope of the discussion of pedagogy and cannot be reflected on the basis of historical understanding,so it lost its scientific and theoretical foundation.Until the 1970s,under the historical background of the Federal Republic of Germany implementing more moderate foreign policies,under the theoretical background of new historical research directions such as“social history" and "historical social science",the younger generation of historians rebuilt the connection between Historik and historical didactics with "historical consciousness" as the core concept.The operations of mental that constitute historical consciousness explain human past experience,and transform these experiences into the orientation of life practice,so as to achieve the double gain of the growth of experience and the extension of human self-understanding.The orientation’s demand in human life determines the goals and content of historical thinking,which requires Historik to focus on didactics and provide a theoretical basis for historical didactics.Correspondingly,the goals,principles and methods of historical didactics also changed.Historical didactics coordinates the wholeness,practicalness and subjectivity of scientifical knowledge in a complementary way.Its task is to cultivate people’s ability to form historical consciousness and let the rationality of historical knowledge play a role in human life.The methods of historical didactics are manifested in the present orientation,multi-perspective and scientific orientation in the overall development trend,and in the specific principles,they are manifested in the characteristics of problem orientation,ability orientation,and project orientation.Since the beginning of the new century,"historical competence" became a new focus of discussion in historical didactics.The competence model of historical thinking has been elaborated based on previous historical didactics theories and has been applied in practical history teaching.