Digital historical maps in classrooms. Challenges for history education

PARELLADA, CRISTIAN

History Education in the digital Age

Springer

Lugar: Cham; Año: 2022;

Historical maps are an essential tool in the field of history teaching. One of their main purposes is to show the transformations in the territory that have occurred as a result of human actions (Kamusella, 2010). In this sense, historical maps can be defined as a present-day representation of how space was configured in the past. However, despite their notable presence in classrooms, the characteristics of the historical maps that circulate in educational contexts and how students understand them have not been studied in depth (Carretero, 2018a). Previous research shows that most people tend to assume that the borders of national territories remain unchanged over the years. They even assume that they are entities that were present even before the boundaries of the nation were established (Parellada, et al., 2020). Our main hypothesis is that these erroneous representations regarding national territory are largely due to the type of cartographic representations that circulate in the school context, mainly through textbooks. In this sense, the objective of this chapter is to analyse how digital historical maps can become powerful tools to promote the development of historical thought. To this end, the characteristics of historical maps of the national territory included in textbooks will first be analysed. Then, the relationship between national historical accounts and cartographic representations, which legitimize certain meanings about the territory, will be highlighted. For this purpose, some results obtained by our research team in previous studies that analysed how university students and textbooks from different countries represent the changes in the dimensions of the national territory as a product of different historical processes will be analysed. Third, the importance of historical maps as instruments for the teaching of history and their relationship with the development of historical thought will be analysed. Finally, the possibilities that digital tools offer for producing cartographic representations that favour a dynamic understanding of the development of national borders will be considered. It is expected that digital tools can provide a dynamic and complex view of changes in national borders, but it is also be necessary to consider how they can contribute to improving misconceptions about the national territory.