A History Teachers’ Classroom Practice Research through Self-reflective Teaching Diary

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Classroom lessons are conducted through interactions between teachers and students. Teacher factor, in particular, has recently been emphasized.BR In this research, ‘I’, as a history teacher, reflect on my own classes through teaching diary and analyze how teachers exploit their knowledges and how students respond in return, which would be conducive to effective teaching plans. This study was performed by the teacher herself and utilized the reflective techniques through self-reflective teaching diary, targeting second and third grade of a middle school in Chungnam, and 46 periods of history class have been meticulously observed and researched from March 1 to November 29, 2013.BR The research results are as follows. First, as the resource of the teacher knowledge, the researcher exploits her own historical knowledges, together with information on teaching materials, her experiences back in secondary school and content knowledges acquired in college, other teachers’ web sites and demonstration classes. Second, the researcher develops the lesson in order to have students understand the historical context, aiming to facilitate students’ understanding of the present through past fact. Third, it appears that a great part of classes can be developed by story telling by analyzing teaching diary.BR Finally, teaching and learning activities in accordance with the students’ understanding of history are analyzed in this research. One of the difficulties the researcher frequently faces in conducting history class, especially when teaching concepts and terms, is that she is not fully capable of figuring out how well students understand. In this sense, reflections through teaching diary enable teachers to look back on their own classes, raise awareness of the problems occurred, and help them develop their specialties.