Abstract

The didactics of history traditionally are assigned no role in the academic discipline of history, influencing the students, rather than the practitioners, of history. The developments of the categories of history and pedagogy in West Germany serve to illustrate the actual field of the didactics of history -questions of how one thinks of history; the role of history in human nature; and the uses to which history can be put. In the 1960s and 1970s, as part of an emerging process of historical self-awareness and a concern with curricular reform, the didactics of history developed into a distinct field. Historical didacticians became more involved with the discipline of history, although they were still associated with pedagogy. Currently, four issues form the focus of the didactics of history. They are the methodology of instruction, the function of history in public life, the establishment of goals for historical education in schools, and the analysis of the nature, function, and importance of historical consciousness. The didactics of history can be defined as an investigation of historical learning, the basic question of which asks how our experience and interpretation of the past influences our understanding of the present and our conception of the future