Los fundamentos de una investigación sobre la concepción de las finalidades cívicas y culturales del profesorado de geografía e historia. Objetivo de esta etapa

It is considered that, in France, the teaching of geography and history is necessary for their contribution to shared culture and for the recognition of general interest; and therefore, for reflection and social and political action. The contemporary political, cultural and school context and the attitude of the teachers themselves as regards these subject matters tends to weaken the legitimacy of such aims. Suddenly, it is the sense of school history and geography itself which weakens or is suppressed from regular class practice. We present here the issues and methodology regarding the realisation of such aims; this research, besides analysing what already exists, tries to produce training actions. We have kept three concepts which make up our theoretical framework: historical awareness, territorial awareness and civic awareness, which we have tried to specify and even build up and formulate. In order to analyse the teaching staff’s conceptions, we have chosen semi-conducted interviews with primary and secondary education volunteers, although there were few of them. After a year’s research, the main result we have obtained is the reflection on historical awareness, territorial awareness and civic awareness, which leads us to a dynamic and critical reading of school geography and history, a reading we consider favourable for renewing the way of teaching them.