The history laboratory: the student as the historian in search of the sources

Abstract

From the experiences of the research project "The history laboratory": the student as a historian looking for sources, promoted since 2018 by the National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research (INDIRE), the essay focuses on the theme of History's Didactics laboratory implemented by a research team that works in three different phases of the school (elementary school, middle and high school). To define an extensible and repeatable teaching model, in the first step the laboratory was structured starting from a common source of documents analysed with the three classes involved: by considering the flexibility accordingly to different ages and school levels, and by proposing to investigate the teaching approach practice by an analysis of the sources and the role that these practices can play in the acquisition of disciplinary skills and knowledge.