CONCEPTUAL BASES OF THE RESEARCH ACTIVITY IN THE PROCESS OF TEACHING WORLD HISTORY AT THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

Abstract

In the article, the conceptual bases of the research activity in the process of teaching world history at the secondary school are covered. In accordance with the authors, the main feature of such training is the intensification of children’s academic activity, promoting its research character, and, thus, gradually providing the students an initiative to organize their cognitive activity. Such approach requires the teachers’ adaption of their research-based teaching methods in correspondence with the students’ interests and abilities, their age peculiarities and psychic development. The authors theoretically specified the main functions of the research activity in the process of teaching world history in the secondary school. The article states that the involvement of students in research activities can provide a successful solution of numerous educational challenges; in particularly, they are connected to the individual approach, level differentiation, creating a positive learning motivation, and professional orientation. Authors find out the main characteristics of the research activity in teaching history: 1) determination of a problem in the academic historical material that may involve ambiguity in its solution (for textbooks, it is, first of all, a problematic material representation); 2) the students’ acquisition of skills to formulate assumptions, hypotheses by means of the specially designed tasks; 3) the development of students’ skills with the various sources of information and analysis; 4) the formation of the self-educa-tion skills, namely, the ways of the pupils’ active learning; 5) the development of the students’ ability to take up a research position, apply to the research activity elements; 6) forming the ability to represent the research results. The article states that the use of research in teaching world history at the secondary school can significantly improve the academic performance of pupils and historical expertise, will enable students to develop important characteristics of creativity as originality, flexibility, performance, thinking, associating lightness, sensitivity to problems and increase the level of the practical orientation skills and students’ competencies.