The use of historical feature film in the teaching of history, May 29

Historical feature films have the potential to motivate and engage today’s visually oriented students and to connect them both emotionally and intellectually to historical narrative frameworks, and as such are appealing to many teachers of history. This presentation reports on a research project that aimed to explore the potential of historical feature films as a pedagogical tool and found that they can serve, not only as a mechanism of narrative engagement, but as a vehicle for exploring nature of history. The pedagogical pathways and strategies for effective integration of multi-modal sources into history teaching practice will be traced and examined.
 
Dr. Debra Donnelly is a history educator in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She has a secondary school background with extensive classroom experience across a range of educational settings in Australia and internationally. Debra’s research interests center on the role of the visual and media in the development of historical and global consciousness in an age of ever-increasing access through modern technology. Her research explores the relationship between pedagogy and teacher disciplinary frameworks and the role of the visual and multi-modality in learning.