Can history be experienced? : The museum as a learning context from a student perspective - history teaching and historical consciousness

This essay is a case study based on two sources of empirical data, qualitative interviews and responses from a questionnaire, which examines upper secondary school students’ attitudes to history teaching in a museum context. The students’ answers are further analyzed in relation to the concept of historical consciousness. Thus, history teaching in the museum, from a student perspective, and the students’ capacity of expressing a historical consciousness in their answers, constitute the core of this essay. The motive for a case study like this, is the emphasis of historical consciousness in the course syllabus as well as the emphasis of cooperation between different educational institutions in the goverment’s goals of cultural politics. My study shows, that a majority of the students appreciate the museum as a learning context, they define it as an entertaining but also as an informative, involving and including milieu. The study further shows, that the students have difficulties expressing a historical consciousness, but also the complexity of the concept itself and the problems to identify and “measure” it. My conclusion is, that in order to stimulate an interest and understanding for the history subject – and perhaps even a historical consciousness – it is important that history as a school subject, is not confined within the four walls of a classroom, but is learnt and experienced through and within the center of our daily lifes