Students’ preferences in learning history

Rosy Talin

School of Education and Social Development, University Malaysia Sabah

Email: rostalin@gmail.com

Accepted 03 March, 2013

Abstract

There are many studies referring to improving the teaching of History in the classroom but less emphasis was given to study what students’ think about the teaching and what they actually preferred. This study investigates students’ preferences in the teaching and learning History. This study adopts the qualitative techniques and was carried out in rural secondary schools. The participants of this study were16 secondary school students aged 16 years old. They were interviewed before and after an observed History lesson as to understand their preferences in learning History. The finding showed that these participants preferred learning History through seeing, doing and hearing. To put in Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory these participants were a mixture of auditory, visual and kinesthetic learners. As for the teaching activities these participating students preferred ‘hands-on’ and fun activities, sense of humour, and visual presentation of content and notes instead of the traditional way of teaching the subject. This finding proves there was a gapin the teaching of History between what the students preferred with what was offered by the teachers. This explains why History was marked as a boring subject among students. 

Keywords: Learning of History, Teaching of History, Students Preferences.