TEACHERS AND STUDENTS’ VIEWS ON LEARNING AND TEACHING HISTORY : Teaching and Learning History in Grade 12th of Upper Secondary Schools in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan.

In this article, I tried to study the different factors that cause interest among students in history subject in Afghan schools, especially in 12th grade. For this reason, it seems the current methods of teaching and learning history is important to investigate. on one hand, there are different changes in the content of history subject during the different periods that cause the changes in the teachers’ views on historical thinking and transferring the aim and content of history to students. On the other hand, existing history content is controversial. Besides, the quality of learning and teaching history is sometimes in such a way that less students get interested in studying this subject. In Afghanistan, the formation of writing history content is based on inclusion of a lot of information in limited pages. Likewise, there is much research in other countries about history teaching, which show a similar situation to Afghanistan. In addition, lower qualification of history teachers is problematic, as the teachers have difficulties in developing the students’ critical thinking. The content of history book of 12th grade, which is mostly about contemporary history of Afghanistan and important events of 20th century of the world, is full of conflict and difficulties that caused schools stand at the center of conflict. Therefore, we can still see the effects of contemporary difficulties on students toward nation building, while secondary school is base for improvement of civic life. Therefore, I would like to find the views of teachers and students about 12th grade history teaching to understand what the aim of teaching history is according to teachers and students, what the teachers’ views about pedagogical content knowledge for teaching history are, and how teachers teach history in Afghan schools. For this reason, 60 schoolteachers who teach history of 12th grade and 100 students of 12th grade compose the sample of this study in 60 different schools of Ghazni province, which were selected randomly including urban and rural areas. Through distributing separate questionnaire to teachers and students, I found that there are no big differences in the views of urban and rural teachers and students about teaching and learning history. To some degree, the students’ views differ from those of teachers, especially their views on teaching strategy that is visible in the tables and charts that are analyzed and discussed.TEM