Rūta Šermukšnytė (PDF)
https://doi.org/10.53631/DIS/2014.6.8
Following independence and the new openness to foreign expertise, there has been a noticeable increase in attention paid to visual principles and methods of teaching history in Lithuania, despite that they were known, considered and employed to a certain extent already during the Soviet period, in the interwar Lithuanian Republic and throughout earlier periods of Lithuanian history. Taking as its starting point a batch of current didactic history texts, educational regulations and questions included in the national history proficiency exam, this research attempted to answer the following questions about how the use of images is controlled or supervised: where lies the educational potential of the imagery perceived? What functions are assigned to images in history education? What suggestions are made on how images are interpreted and their multiple meanings are controlled? The problems conditioned the structure of the article: it begins with a fragmentary discussion and survey of the understanding of visual aids in history didactics through interwar and Soviet Lithuania, and later on, the focus is shifted to the current situation. The author scrutinises the declared adoption of an educational model that mainly relies on historical sources, rethinks the functions of textbook illustrations and analyses the national history proficiency examination. The article provides a greater insight into the real, rather than declarative, nature of how images are used in history education. It leads to the conclusion that adopting the history teaching model based on visual sources is not yet an accomplished fact but a continuing process.
Keywords: education, Soviet period, visual sources, illustration