Chapter 7: Good History Teaching In Switzerland: Principles, Findings, Suggestions

What is good history teaching? I was often confronted with this question as a teacher trainer after publishing Geschichte lehren (Teaching History) (Gautschi, 1999). Students and teachers wanted to know if all the learning strategies and learning situations described in that book were equally suitable for teaching history. I could not come up with an evidence-based answer at the time, which prompted me to pursue the study being presented in this chapter: Guter Geschichtsunterricht (Good History Education) (Gautschi, 2009).

Three preliminary considerations were important to me when designing this study:

In the first part of this chapter I present the key theoretical principles on which this study was based and then outline the research design adopted. Selected findings are then presented in the third part of this chapter, while the lesson “Switzerland in World War II,” which was identified as “good” from various perspectives in this study, is described in detail in the fourth part of the chapter. Finally, some options for future research are provided.