Construction of the Written Trace in History Class: Between Reference to the Scientific Discipline and Problematization for the Development of Students’ Transversal Skills

Construction of the Written Trace in History Class: Between Reference to the Scientific Discipline and Problematization for the Development of Students’ Transversal Skills

Dr MENYE OBIA Eric

Assistant at the University of Yaoundé I

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2024.802085

Received: 25 January 2024; Revised: 03 February 2024; Accepted: 10 February 2024; Published: 12 March 2024

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to examine the historical problematization in the written record. To examine this problematization of the written record in history notebooks, we adopted a documentary analysis which was based on 117 educational sheets from 117 teachers. The documentary analysis grid has shown that there are absences of identification of the problem, use of the authors, feedback on the problem-solving process, names of historians and historiographers and a very weak elaboration hypotheses based on documentary research questions, low use of concepts, low comparison of facts. It is up to the history teacher to problematize an introduction to a history lesson and answer this question at the conclusion. The teacher should also use the names of historians and historiographers.

Keywords: written record, historical method, historical problem, documentary analysis

INTRODUCTION

This study addresses the construction of written record by secondary school history teachers. Indeed, in the Cameroonian educational space, very little studies has been carried out on this issue. Most authors in the teaching of history in Cameroon have focused their work on teaching practices to facilitate the transition from pedagogic approach to competence based approach (Nkoumou, 2016) or to improve existing competence based approach (Menye, 2019). In the rest of the world, work on this academic writing has been treated by several disciplines, among others in French (Nonnon 2004, Pottier 2005, Promonet 2015 b), history geography (Meunier and Sala 2016; SIROT, 2018; Promonet, 2017), and mathematics (Blochs 2009, Priolet 2013). Beyond disciplinary compartmentalization, an interdisciplinary perspective crossing geography, life and earth sciences and French was created by (Philippot and Niclot 2009). This work explored the written summary from a didactic perspective to try to understand its functioning and uses by linking teacher activity and student learning. As for history, it is important to return to the writings of (SIROT, 2018; Promonet, 2017). SIROT (2018) studies the gap that exists between usual school practices and the new practices induced by flipped classroom. The flipped classroom is utilized to remove direct instruction from the classroom, which usually concerns watching a recorded lecture as homework, and this creates time for more active learning activities in the classroom. Promonet (2017) focuses his writing on the co-construction of the oral written summary with students. Through this study, the author shows that good co-construction of the written trace makes it possible to introduce clear stages in the progress of students towards reflective autonomy and their ability to express and structure their thoughts. This writing is supported by those of (Maingueneau, 2009; Bucheton & Soulé, 2009) who note that written summary open a discursive space in which the student’s ethos can find a place as a learner, as a contributor to the community, discursive nature of the class (Bernié, 2000)

However, in history class, Bouhon (2008) shows that problematizations are absent and Nicole Tutiaux-Guillon (2006; 2008) notes that the historical knowledge taught functions in a way that is out of step with the reference discipline and that the epistemological paradigms which overlook contemporary historiography find very little resonance with teachers. This situation is different from philosophy class where each lesson is punctuated by the names of philosophers. This is also the case in literature where works are studied and where students master the names of literary figures. In mathematics, nobody has forgotten the name of Thales or that of Pythagoras. These examples, to cite just a few, adequately reflect the literary, philosophical or mathematical culture of the learners. What about historical culture in the written record? Beyond the historical culture linked to the names of historians, there is that of problematization in the written summary. In philosophy notebooks we always observe philosophical problems which arise from a confrontation of philosophers who express themselves on a subject of teaching. In literature, we have not forgotten art for art’s sake or even literary activism. This evocation of issues in philosophy and literature shows the coherence in the didactic transposition. However, it turns out that it is not the debates that lacking in history. The case of the decolonization of African states in Upper sixth is obvious with violent decolonizations on one side and peaceful decolonizations on the other. It is therefore easy to wonder how teachers cannot oppose these theses to obtain a historical problem and summon the relevant historians in the writing of the written trace. Does the paradigmatic epistemological change brought by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre through historical problematization after 1945 exist in the history notebook of secondary school students? This writing examines the place of historical problematization in the written trace.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 The Importance of Written Record

Figure 1: Sample copy of note book

For Ouvrier-Buffet (2006), the course notebook is a reference document which tells students what they must remember and helps them find it if they forget. What is written in this notebook may be used without justification by students. In this definition, the author mentions content, design and uses. This functional definition linked to the authoritarian teaching style matches that of (Promonet, 2015) on the conservation function. The author sees the written summary as what the teacher decides to have his students record in their notebooks, binders, Blochs (2009) will not move away from the function of the support trace proposed by Promonet and Ouvrier to see the course book as a work (term borrowed from Granger, 1998) and as an instrument (or tool). It is a work, the result of an investment and work provided mainly by the teacher. The course seems to be built with the idea of ​​future use by students in mind. We then see the “instrument” aspect of the course book emerge. The teacher builds the course according to his students, it can be adapted to their level, and the course book is intended for the students.

From these definitions, it is possible to identify the functions of the written records. Educators distinguish five functions of the written summary (conceptualization tool, memorization tool, reinvestment tool, metacognition tool and language tool). First, it constitutes a conceptualization tool. Indeed, by putting newly acquired knowledge into words, the student carries out mental operations such as reformulation, classification, organization and hierarchy, etc. Then, the written trace helps to memorization and constitutes a tool for reinvestment insofar as it “fixes” the concepts and allows the student to find them, enrich them and clarify them. It also helps with metacognition because by structuring their story, to make it transmissible, the child becomes aware of their learning. In addition, the written trace contributes to language learning because it involves mastering and respecting the rules of spelling and syntax, and the manipulation of a precise lexicon (Balmigere, 2017).

In the institutionalization phase, it is a question of putting into words what we have learned, we establish knowledge, of moving from what has been experienced, discovered by the student to what he knows how to say about it. During this passage, the student carries out mental operations underlying the construction of knowledge (identifying, defining, naming, formulating, summarizing, classifying, organizing, prioritizing, linking, etc.). This is what made Boileau (1674) to say that: “What is well conceived is clearly stated and the words to say it come easily”. Everything necessarily starts from the design, when the mind manages to do it the organization is put in place on its own based on good syntax. And Hegel adds: “Thought only becomes precise when it finds the word. I am only aware of what I think when I am able to formulate it, to explain it in words. » Alongside institutionalization, the written record helps with memorization. The learning process can be summarized in 3 phases: understand – learn – remember. In history class, the student is subject to the community of researchers of which he himself is one. On the basis of audio, texts, images and many other supports, the student carries out epistemic mediation under the control of the teacher which will lead them not only to access knowledge but also to understand it. The written trace which was the subject of intense discussions is retained first in class then at home during a second learning process. It will allow the student to memorize knowledge and to find it again. The trace must therefore be accessible (importance of the organization of the traces). It must also be readable and understandable (need to involve the student in its production). What’s more, the written record is also a reinvestment tool. Most knowledge is built gradually, through successive enrichments (spiral progressions). The written trace makes it possible to reactivate knowledge in order to be able to clarify it and enrich it. It also allows new ones to be built. Also, the written trace is a support for language learning. In fact, producing a written record with students’ means having a situation to learn how to produce informative writing or explanatory writing. It is also learning to present such a type of text (importance of formatting). And it’s finally learning to use a precise lexicon. Finally, the written trace helps with metacognition. The student who searches for the words to formulate what he has discovered and understood, who structures his writing and puts it into shape is a student who becomes aware of his learning. He learns to talk about his knowledge; it makes it transmissible. This knowledge, through its written record, finds its place in a whole which is structured throughout schooling.

THE ELEMENTS OF QUESTIONING IN HISTORY

3.1 From the historical method to the historical problem

Beyond the faithful representation of the object, there is the question of the strategy adopted and the purpose of this adopted strategy. It is in this sequel that Léopold Von Ranke1 declares that: “history […] only seeks to show how things really were «. Historical truth from this point of view is the main objective sought by the historian. But to reach this past, the historian follows a set of steps. Hence the importance of this approach given by (Bacel, 2000, p. 2) when he writes:

“Although history belongs to the past, it is a dynamic process that requires constant rewriting based on new and perpetual investigations. The historical method consists of the establishment of historical facts in order to enrich the interpretation of a period and to understand it. The establishment of the facts revolves around different sources.

The historical method therefore appears to Bancel as the way to follow to have history and therefore to reveal the faithful representation of what happened. This method is inspired by the hypothetico-deductive method from social sciences such as Sociology or Anthropology. It responds to the following steps:

• Identify the historical question or problem;
• Delimit the object of study;
• Clarify the concepts and formulate the hypotheses;
• Identify the documents which have the value of testimony with regard to the object of study;
• Identify the facts that they establish in order to answer the initial question.

For constructivists, the first step in the historical method is to identify the historical question or problem. From this emerges underlying human motivations: personal passion, political, economic command, etc. Whatever the origin of this question, it determines the choice of sources and the type of questions that students could ask of History (Prost, 1996; Segall, 1999). In the second stage, which is not very far from the first, the historian delimits his object of study. More precisely, it is a question of choosing history between its different fields. In the second stage, which is not very far from the first, the historian delimits his object of study. More precisely, it is a question of choosing history between its different fields. This selection is not always easy to the extent that in history, there is no document that is not valuable. In this sense, “no scientific work is sterile, no truth is useless to science…; There is no such thing as a small subject in history. […]”. This new conception of the social function of history does not have a particular preference for the object of history, it deals with everything: it is total history. This concerns economic history, history of religions or even cultural history… The clarification of concepts and the formulation of hypotheses is the third step. The concept is generally the abstract representation of a thing. This representation is obligatory for any discipline that wants to explain itself and make itself understood. This point of view is shared by Marrou who specifies: “In the passage from historical reality itself, to which the documents testify, to historical knowledge, the use of concepts is inevitable. » (1956, p.140). Beyond its essential character for knowledge in general and history in particular, history must not lock itself in by its own concepts for fear of remaining a historicizing history. This is what Marrou reveals when he writes: “Purely rational concepts do not allow us to account for history. We also use “human” concepts like: republic, monarchy, aristocracy, legality, dictator, senate, conspiracy, ambition, freedom, despair, ingratitude » (p.142). In history now there are several types of concepts: historical concepts, analytical concepts, methodological concepts. After having clarified his concepts, the historian can then formulate his hypotheses. This consists of provisionally establishing a thesis which will subsequently be verified. The penultimate stage of the historical method is devoted to the documentation which will verify the hypothesis. Here, the historian can call on the written document as well as the unwritten document that he deems necessary and above all in line with his research object. At the end of his investigation, which is also here that of the historical method, the historian identifies the facts which will be used to write the product that is history.

3.2 Pedagogical-didactic mediation through teaching-learning by problem solving: an anchoring of the problematized written record

Problem-based teaching has its origins in the work of Dewey (1910) through the dynamic movement of trial and error. It is also visible in gestalist psychology from the evidence of the global and associative character of the elements defining the form of a problem to be solved (Köhler, 1963 in Oser and Baeriswyl, 2001). In mathematics, the writings of Newell and Simon (1972), understand this approach in algorithms or euristics mobilized by experts to solve problems in specific domains.

In the field of history, this principle appeared with the Annales School established by Febvre (1953) and Bloch (1974). The problem solving sequence is defined by Oser and Baeriswyl (2001) through four steps. In the first, students are confronted with a problem to solve which can involve presentation, discovery or reformulation. Before analyzing this step, it is necessary to define the historical problem. For Martineau, (1999), “it is a questioning of the present addressed to the past, it is a question to be resolved which lends itself to discussion, this consisting of subjecting the question or question to the test of the facts of the past. Hypothesis of response envisaged” (p.148).

Indeed, the problem constitutes the starting point of the work of the historian and the student. It serves to question the past in order to have solid elements allowing the emergence of a point of view about this past. Returning to the first stage of the historical method, Hassani (2005), indicates that it consists of “posing” a historical problem and formulating questions. This involves the activation of students’ prior knowledge and their mobilization according to “models and categories of problems of a more specifically historical nature” (Martineau, 1997, p.103). Beforehand, the teacher must ensure that his students have mastered the language of history and its method, and are willing to complete a problem-solving process. Here, the student must know: “what a problem is, and […] how a problem can be qualified as historical” (Idem). To this is added knowledge, concepts and theories associated with the field of history studied.

 In the second and third stages, the student formulates hypotheses and validates them through a research process. It is therefore a question of developing hypotheses based on the questions previously raised, of carrying out documentary research or gathering information (through educational resources) and of analyzing the information collected (Dalongeville and Huber, 2000; Duquette, 2011). Documentary research constitutes a very important sub-step in the sense that it is here that the search for data is carried out, making it possible to verify the hypotheses formulated. Through the documents made available to students by the teacher, they engage in research. Said documents may be composed of manuals, atlases, films, audio documents, etc. provided to the student as traces, so that he can construct his reasoning and arrive at an answer, an explanation. It is necessary to emphasize that “the student’s approach in history class does not therefore consist of memorizing his database, but of using it, of drawing from it to construct an interpretation” (Martineau, 1999, p. 150). What is expected in this work on documents beyond the information is a critical look at elements such as: authors, limits, reliability… The formulation of a hypothesis corresponds to a first opinion, to a conjecture that can explain an event, an evolution, etc. As such, Martineau qualifies the hypothesis as a “methodological tool” and defines it as follows: “Intended to provide an explanation, a hypothesis is a situated, present and current point of view on a situation of the past, which we submitted to the test of facts” (1999, p. 150). The efforts made around the hypothesis will therefore make it possible to make sense of a situation. ¨As for information processing, students are called upon to “collect information and associate it, compare it, group it using concepts” (Martineau, 1997, p.105).

At the end, the students carry out, according to the model of Oser and Baeriswyl (2001), the reflective return on the problem solving process aimed at becoming aware and appreciating, before sharing it with others, the value of the validated hypothesis to the problem posed (Dalongeville and Huber, 2000; Duquette, 2011; Hassani, 2005; Martineau, 1997, 2010).

3.3 Argument from authority, validity of historical knowledge

Conceived by positivists as a science like chemistry, history eludes empirical testing because of its non-repetitiveness, its subjectivism linked to its human character by its actors and by those who write it. A politico-military history like that of the First World War from 1914 to 1918 will never be repeated. However, we know this story that we accept and believe in it through the documents. On this subject, Marrou notes:

…We will not confine our historian to a knowledge that is only for him: we will show in conclusion the social role that is due to him; let us simply emphasize here that this knowledge developed by and for the historian will also be valid for all those who prove capable of sharing it, that is to say of understanding it, of finding it as true. (1956, p. 220)

Approaching the question of the validity of historical knowledge from the angle of the argument from authority raises several other questions at the same time. For example, it refers to the cultural purpose of history. Also, the argument from authority has a link with objective knowledge.

One of the primary purposes of any discipline according to Chervel (1996) is to give the student the culture of the said discipline. This discipline is made up of all the knowledge of the discipline in question. In history, this knowledge includes dates, historical facts, historical events or even historical concepts which are shared by the society of historians and by historians and society. On this subject, Gadamer (1996) writes: “Everything that is consecrated by tradition and custom has an anonymous authority and our finite historical being is determined by the fact that this authority of things transmitted […] always has power over our action and our behavior. » Historical culture thus appears in Gadamer’s eyes as an authority before which we can only accept because it is recognized by those who preceded us and transmitted through documents. This historical culture is generally carried by credible historians such as Herodotus in the 5th century, Langlois and Seignobos in the 17th and 18th centuries. Nowadays we can mention names like Abwa, Bérida, Eloundou or even Ricoeur. All these names represent an argument of authority. It is in this logic that we can understand Marrou who underlines:

As the phenomena studied move further away from the experience of daily life, it becomes more difficult, it becomes rarer, to have first-hand knowledge of them: we do not repeat a delicate experiment every eight days to be carried out like that of Michelson and Morley; we cannot repeat such clinical observations at will. In all these cases, the physicist or the biologist accepts the truth of these results or these data on the basis of the testimony of an authorized colleague, exactly as the historian trusts his witnesses: we believe that, if we redo the experiment or made the observation, we would obtain the same truths as the historian believes that, if he had observed in the place of the witness, he would have recorded the same event. (1954, p.217)

Ricoeur also treated the question of truth from the angle of the argument from authority. Here the author extended the debate on objectivity/truth. As mentioned above, Ricoeur believes in objectivity as a rationality that leads to historical truth. However, this truth from practice is often opposed to receive facts. For Ricoeur (1991) knowledge is therefore located in a dynamic relationship with, on the one hand, perception, and on the other hand ethics, praxis or action. Each of these three poles is in tension with the others, and all refer to a truth which also remains in tension and resists dogma by its problematic nature. Unlike Ricoeur, who admits a tension between ethics, perception and action as a product of historical truth, Couillard restricts the framework of historical truth between perception and action. He writes:

The horizon, for Science, must remain the world perceived and conceived in knowledge of the aprioristic limits of consciousness. This is the world in which humans are born, act, think and die, this is why knowledge is ultimately about ethics. Many of the common “truths” ultimately rest on inherited traditions, on the “lessons” of history. Here too, truth must be conceived as a tension between dogmatization and problematization” (2013, p.76).

This point of view is shared by Gadamer who affirms about him that historical truth combines prejudices and authority, that it serves as an instance of legitimacy in the public space, which is what also supports Ricoeur (1991) who concludes that “[…] we belong, before any critical gesture, to a reign of presumed truth”.

3.4 Problematization in history class: a difficult marriage between scientific history and school history

The writing of history by historians involves a historiography and an epistemology which are different from that of the school programs and textbooks developed by actors who are sometimes non-historians. Furthermore, the choice of content as well as educational approaches depend on educational policies which are decided by politicians.

Alongside this institutional obstacle, Doussot notes the positivist epistemological obstacle which manifests itself in the narrative form of history on the one hand and on the other the truth which linearizes the facts and stories. It is not surprising that he finds that school history is a non-contradictory and non-problematic narrative which indicates a reality. Tutiaux-Guillon arrives at the same observation that the positivist paradigm is the representation widely shared by teachers (and future teachers). The expression of this double positivist belief is that the didactic contract established by the teacher consists of “extracting information” from the documents leading the students to consider the latter as “neutral” and “objective” relationships of what is took place in the past (Doussot & Vézier, 2014). Following the didactic contract, the theory of joint action (Sensevy, 2011) extends the reflection by seeking to understand the joint action of the teacher and the student around knowledge. At this level, Doussot notes that it is up to the teacher to set up a situation which will be explored by the learners because here, he represents the historian and therefore, he enjoys a legitimacy which is granted to him by the official texts. This realistic epistemic vision is opposed by a mode of practical knowledge (Langlois, Seignobos, Bloch, Febvre) of the historical fact as the result of the practice of a community of scholars (Bourdieu, 1980). This vision is modeled through the scholarly practice of knowledge, that developed by history professionals which consists of a real epistemic game. It is expressed through the identification and overcoming of false problems generated by epistemological obstacles which constitute one of the specificities of all scientific problematization. This process is initiated by the discussion of the question, the one which arises from current concerns, on the contrary the one which was posed directly by the actors of the event (Doussot). Problematization seen here as (epistemological obstacle, tension between constructed facts and explanatory models, conditions of possibility of an explanation as historical knowledge), which refer in particular to problem history whose founders are the Annales School or even to the case study according to Ginzburg.

METHODOLOGY

In order to preserve the anonymity of the teacher preparation sheets, we have just numbered them. We carried out our study in Cameroon in the Center region, respectively in the Mfoundi, Nanga-Eboko and Lékié divisions. We chose Cameroon because we are residence in Cameroon. Our sampling is theoretical. Doing the documentary analysis, we selected 117 files. The preparation sheets that the teacher use to prepare lessons before going to class. The teachers from whom we received the files were either senior high school teachers, secondary school teachers, temporary workers with a degree in history. We chose these senior and high school teachers because they have undergone training in a Higher Teacher Training College (ENS). This training allows them to have a basis in the teaching of history. Regarding temporary workers, a degree in history allows them to have the epistemology of history as well as the content. These two categories make it easier to collect relevant data. We created a documentary analysis grid based on our conceptual framework. The choice of documentary analysis here corresponds to the subject of our study.

RESULTS

In the learners’ notebooks it was a question of checking the presence of the following information: identification of the problem, development of hypotheses based on documentary research questions, use of authors, feedback on the problem solving process, concepts, names of historians and historiographers, comparisons of facts. The different themes of our results will be presented in turn in this sequel.

4.1 Lack of identification of the problem

Just as with historians, history teachers who represent historians in the history class had to identify a historical problem, but in this work, this is not the case. This figure reveals that out of the 117 learners’ notebooks, no teacher identified a historical problem from second grade through first grade to final year.

4.2 Poor development of hypotheses based on questions

By analyzing the students’ notebooks, it was expected that they (teachers) would formulate hypotheses. Very little is done, i.e. 18 teachers out of 117 put forward the hypotheses. With a low percentage, student notebooks reveal that history teachers make fewer and fewer hypotheses.

4.3 Relative documentary research

Like historians whose main laboratory is the document, the teacher is also expected to carry out high-level documentary research. Only 18 teachers out of 117 carried out documentary research which was found in their teaching sheets which made it possible to develop the written records. However, effective research was not found in student notebooks. This question is linked to the names of the historians.

4.4 An absence of the names of historians and historiographers

By analyzing the students’ notebooks, it was a question of finding the historian names as we find them in literature, mathematics or even philosophy notebooks, to name only these three cases. Here, history teachers do not introduce the names of historians, historiographers or even epistemologists in history notebooks. The figure below is quite expressive.

4.5 A lack of feedback on the problem resolution process

In the introduction, history teachers were supposed to pose a historical problem as historians do at the beginning of their research, however, with a zero percentage, it clearly appears that there is no identification of the problem historically. How do I come back or resolve a problem that doesn’t exist? This is what emerges from the feedback on the problem solving process as we should observe it at the conclusion. Thus, none of the 117 teachers provided feedback on the problem-solving process. This is understandable in the sense that if the teacher has not posed a historical problem, how will he answer a question that he has not previously asked?

4.6 Poor use of concepts

In history, historians use several types of concepts. By analyzing the written records of teachers, we sought to find these concepts. The use of concepts is done by 17 teachers out of 117. This number clearly shows that teachers use concepts very little, raising the question of the knowledge of concepts among history teachers.

4.7 A relative comparison of the facts

Alongside the use of concepts, this study investigated the comparison of facts in history. It appears that history teachers do not compare facts when it comes to the written record. Out of 117 teachers, no teacher compares history facts in secondary school students’ history notebooks.

At the end of the analysis of the results, questions remain. The first is the resemblance between different results of different sub-variables. The second certain absences: the non-existence of the historical method in the learners’ history notebooks, the absence of historical validity in the learners’ written records. These elements will be the subject of discussions in the following segment.

DISCUSSION

This study showed that there is no historical method in the written traces of students’ history notebooks. Also, this study revealed an absence of historical validity in the written traces of students’ history notebooks.

Before addressing the absences in the written traces, a review of certain similarities noted in the results must be explained. Identifying the problem and reviewing the problem resolution process produced identical results. This resemblance is explained by the dependence of the first on the second. There is a close connection. Indeed, a teacher cannot reverse the resolution of the problem if he has not previously identified the problem.

Concerning the absence of the historical method in the written traces of students’ history notebooks, in history-geography, the “written trace” is very close to the disciplinary model (Audigier, 1997). Conception shared by Wineburg and Wilson (2001) on the similarity of the results, particularly on the lack of intellectual approaches associated with their construction. For Nicole Tutiaux–Guillon (2006; 2008) the historical knowledge taught is part of a realistic epistemology, that which gives the real fact. If history provides for the historical method, how can we explain the absence of it in the student’s notebook? Is the application of this method sufficient in the oral phase of the course? Isn’t it useful in the written phase? This question is that of (Cariou, 2012, p. 68) who wonders whether we should favor disciplinary knowledge despite transversal knowledge which involves the construction of transversal skills. This question leads to that of knowing how to get students to “think in history by having history texts written” (Cariou, 2012, p. 68). To this question, (Brunet, Ferras & Théry, 1992) shows that it is possible to consider the “written trace” as an interface, that is to say a “plane or line of contact between two systems or two distinct sets » (Brunet, Ferras & Théry, 1992). In Giddens (1979), the positivist epistemological belief that emerges from the written record follows both the need for ontological security and the practical awareness of teachers (Giddens, 1979). It would be for example for (Sensevy 2009, p.50) “

“incompatible with the adequate implementation of the system designed by the didacticians”. In Flament, practical consciousness or practical epistemology are a sort of “bumper” that the peripheral system exerts on the central core if we stick to the theory of the central core coming from the theory of social representation”.

As for the lack of historical validity in the written traces of the students’ history notebooks, it seems to be the most important result of this study. Indeed, there are very few studies and research on the subject and therefore there would not be, for example, a study on the names of historians in the written records of students? In the introduction to this work we, for example, alluded to what happens in philosophy and mathematics where in third grade the students already know the names of certain literary figures and mathematicians. Our results show that the teacher’s history notebook remains the reference. Now this one refers to historians as the most objective, the others only stick to school textbooks. On this subject, Marrou notes:

…We will not confine our historian to a knowledge that is only for him: we will show in conclusion the social role that is due to him; let us simply emphasize here that this knowledge developed by and for the historian will also be valid for all those who prove capable of sharing it, that is to say of understanding it, of finding it as true. (1956, p. 220)

One of the primary purposes of any discipline according to Chervel (1996) is to give the student the culture of the said discipline. This discipline is made up of all the knowledge of the discipline in question. In history, this knowledge includes dates, historical facts, historical events or even historical concepts which are shared by the society of historians and by historians and society. On this subject, Gadamer (1996) writes: “Everything that is consecrated by tradition and custom has an anonymous authority and our finite historical being is determined by the fact that this authority of things transmitted […] has always power over our action and behavior. » Historical culture thus appears in Gadamer’s eyes as an authority before which we can only accept because it is recognized by those who preceded us and transmitted through documents. This historical culture is generally carried by credible historians such as Herodotus in the 5th century, Langlois and Seignobos in the 17th and 18th centuries. Nowadays we can mention names like Abwa, Bérida, Eloundou or even Ricoeur. All these names represent an argument of authority. It is in this logic that we can understand Marrou who underlines:

As the phenomena studied move further away from the experience of daily life, it becomes more difficult, it becomes rarer, to have first-hand knowledge of them: we do not repeat a delicate experiment every eight days. to be carried out like that of Michelson and Morley; we cannot repeat such clinical observations at will. In all these cases, the physicist or the biologist accepts the truth of these results or these data on the basis of the testimony of an authorized colleague, exactly as the historian trusts his witnesses: we believe that, if we redo the experiment or made the observation, we would obtain the same truths as the historian believes that, if he had observed in the place of the witness, he would have recorded the same event. (1954, p.217)

How can teachers write history in students’ history notebooks while forgetting the historians? Will it be possible for a student to remember the name of just one historian? However, Demers (2011) suggests the epistemological positions that teachers must have when preparing history lessons. The criterialist/constructivist position which postulates that historical knowledge is a human construction, the realist position which places knowledge as the reflection of a mirror. The third position called relativistic is located between the two previous ones; it is described as “borrower stance” (Maggioni, VanSledright and Alexander, 2009). In this research (Demers, 2011) believes that the criterialist/constructivist posture requires the rigorous and methodical evaluation of evidence, via the euristics of sources and the context of their production (Wineburg, 2001). The evidence here being not only the document but also the names of the historians themselves.

CONCLUSION

This study made it possible to note the absence of identification of the historical problem, the absence of use of the use of authors, the non-return  on the approach of problem solving, a weak use of the names of historians and historiographers, very low hypothesis development based on literature search questions, low use of concepts and low comparison of facts. Theses weaknesses inevitably have a heavy consequences on the problematization in secondary school students. The discussion shows that this study is associated with the work of Doussot and Vezier, (2022) on the positivist epistemological obstacle and an approach to school history that is a non-contradictory and non-problematic narrative that indicate a reality. This observation is shared by (Tutiaux-Guillon, 2008) who notes a prevalence of the positive paradigm, a representation widely shared by teachers (and future teachers). If problematization was already the subject of several works, the historical validity remain the most important result of this work.  Teachers are called to problematize the written record by setting up the conditions for adequate problematization (Doussot, 2022). Avout historical validity, it is necessary that history classes use the names of histories and historiographers in their writings.

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