The Levels of Historical Awareness and Treatment of Controversial Issues in Digital Environments: A Case Study of Future Spanish Secondary School Teachers

Abstract

The aim of this research is to determine, on the one hand, the levels of historical awareness of future Spanish secondary school teachers (n = 61) in social networks and/or virtual environments. On the other hand, it aims to approach the representations of the past-present-future constructed by future teachers in these spaces, and to interpret the relationships between their levels of historical awareness and their interaction with controversial issues based on their own social narratives (n = 169). This study follows a qualitative-deductive approach to test the theoretical transferability of Rüsen's levels of historical consciousness to the specific context of a Spanish university. The results obtained show mostly exemplary and critical levels of historical awareness, with little variation between the dimensions analysed (global pandemic by COVID-19 and public health; historical memory, national identities, migratory crises, and exclusionary identities; sex-gender identities and exclusionary identities). Consequently, it can be concluded that working on controversial issues generated in virtual environments in teacher training could mean a potential improvement in the acquisition of third-order concepts, such as historical awareness, allowing future teachers to successfully address issues and situations of social life in the classroom in a transversal and transversal way. interdisciplinary way.