Abstract:

Traumatic historical events and especially those of World War II holocausts in Greece are either not didactically approached in primary education or the didactic approach is limited to whitewashed narration of the events both in formal classroom environment and in non-formal environment of relevant museums. The difficulty of didactic transformation of traumatic events in primary school students is real and stems both from the nature of the historical event as well as from the young age of the learning subjects. Roger I. Simon's theory of approaching traumatic events can provide an effective guide for designing educational programs that appropriately approach traumatic events, even for kindergarten students.

Simon argues for a critical pedagogy of memory which considers historical knowledge as a social right and good. Through the primal sources, he suggests that we dive into the experiential experience of the people of the past to understand its otherness. In this way, the students experience the traumatic historical event as much as possible without compromising their mental health. The past does not haunt us but guides us to the future.

Simon’s theory and Vygotsky's sociocultural theory provided the theoretical background to design and implement research on the conceptual representations of kindergarten students in relation to the holocausts that took place in their places of origin or living. Kindergarten students of the Greek martyred city of Kalavryta and martyred villages of Viannos and Arvi in the island of Crete were chosen to take part in the research. A group of kindergarten children from the city of Patras, in Peloponnese, were used as control group to compare their conceptual representation to other students of the same age who did not come from or live in a place of martyrdom.

Aiming to reveal students' representations without affecting their construction, visual thinking strategies (VTS) were used. The results of the analysis highlighted the effect of social and cultural background on children’s construction. On the construction of a war event and its consequences, the students of the control group and the students of the martyr places, recorded a percentage of 26% and 68%, respectively.

Also, it is of particular importance that only the kindergarten students of the martyr places correlated given images to World War II at a rate of 9%. What's more, at a rate of 2% they specifically mentioned the German Holocaust.

Thus, we concluded that kindergarten students have conceptual construction on historical events (e.g. a war) which are more specific and richer when their sociocultural background is connected to it, such as a place of martyrdom. That allows us to utilize their prior knowledge towards the developing of innovative didactical approaches and in the future towards more advanced curriculums of history in the early childhood education, always aiming to form the citizens of the future that Simons’ theory suggests. These are the ones with deep knowledge of the past that will lead us all to a better future.

The next phase of the current research is the design and implementation of a relevant educational program in the Municipal Museum of Kalavritan Holocaust (https://www.dmko.gr/en/) for kindergarten students.

Keywords:

Traumatic historical event, conceptual representations, didactical transformation, sociocultural background, museum education, curriculum design.