Our approach to history has been conceptualized to be more analytic and more thematic. We realize that very few (if any) employers want someone who can recite the factors that led to a particular historical event. Rather, employers in schools and elsewhere are looking for someone who can:
- look into an issue with a critical eye,
- research a problem to gain deeper understanding of the consequences of past actions,
- contextualize a situation within a local, national, or global perspective,
- formulate an argument as to which strategy or policy will be most effective,
- read extensively on a particular issue and develop his/her own ideas, and
- look at a particular issue through multiple lenses.
These are the skills of today’s information age, and these are the skills that the Department of History Education aims to achieve in its students. The thematic approach will aim to prepare our students to be active agents of change in schools and beyond. Great history teachers do not simply know more facts than their students. Great history teachers are historians who know how to ask questions, expand their interests, investigate into issues, and engage in change.
Aims and Objectives
- Provide relevant, meaningful and interesting courses in History;
- Equip students with pedagogical skills and dispositions to teach History in pre-tertiary and higher level institutions;
- Engage students with the theoretical principles and practices that underlie the construction and study of History;
- Expose students to the methods of historical research in order to develop their analytical abilities in resolving social problems.
