Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2015 number 6

The article focuses the attention of educators on one of possible innovative ways of modernization of the contemporary historical education. Historiography is a mandatory element of the content of historical education, including the totality of historical research related to any problem. So we need a professional review of the theoretical and empirical levels of historical knowledge to increase the competence of teachers in the field of epistemology. The authors analyze the impact of the philosophical trends in historical research. It is exactly a specific influence of philosophical and world-view schools on cognition, their impact on historical research through the choice of research priorities that determine the significance of theoretical and practical levels of the epistemology of history. The theoretical level, reflecting the connection between the contemporary historical cognition with the system of other scientific knowledge, explains the presence of controversial issues of history by the subject of research itself, by the multiplicity of «historical reality» in the context of the modern theory and practice of historical research. Historical cognition has a constructive character, but this construction is involuntarily and is determined by the «address» of the historian, characterizing a particular cognitive result of his/her work: - the individual context (the historian is not just a product of his/her time, he/she is a unique intersection of social and cultural traditions with the individual characteristics of the research activity); - the socio-cultural context (the historian in his/her research affects the reality under study, because he/she always perceive the past from the perspective of his/her time, in the light of contemporary social and cultural environment, having an inevitable impact on his/her research position and understanding of the events of the past). The pragmatic level of cognition of history is associated with the development of historical knowledge, which updating is influenced by the modern historiographical situation that leads to rethinking of «the phenomenon of disagreement between historians» concerning the controversial issues of the historical science under their study. The pragmatic level of cognition of history is also connected with the desire to improve the methodology of cognition of history. This leads to the necessity to address in the teaching the controversial issues of historical sciences: how do historians-professionals study the controversial issues interesting for them? what are the levels of their cognition and the selection criteria in the content of historical research? The proposed experience of the scientist-historian as a subject of cognition and the conclusions made by him/her can be discussed by a wide range of teachers in their own language, and, during its consideration and use in the teaching of controversial issues of the social-humanitarian science, there is preserved the value-semantic content of real life.