Historical literacy of students about important historical issues of Iran

Literacy plays an important role in making people active citizens of society. The ability to read and write means that a person can keep abreast of current events, communicate effectively, and understand the problems of the world. In the past, literacy was limited to skills such as reading and writing, but in the modern world there is also political, financial, technical, technological, urban, and historical literacy necessary for successful living in urban societies in today’s world. They are very important. For people to be able to navigate the present, to see the present and the future in the context of the past, they need to be equipped with two kinds of tools: an understanding of the field of history and a usable framework of the past. Historical literacy as a framework that can be used by the past helps in historical re-education and leads to the development of people’s historical memory by creating a fair balance in the process of historical literacy between society’s expectations of their education and people’s information, skills and awareness as the ultimate goal. Literacy has moved away from its previous limited meaning as a skill to combat ignorance and found new examples, so there is a connection between social action and literacy as a skill for empowerment. (One of the types of literacy that has not received enough attention is historical literacy. With the passage of time and the progress of life, literacy no longer means the ability to read a word, but the ability to understand the world. Historical literacy not only involves learning historical events, but also attaches importance to strengthening the ability to argue historical interpretive narratives to be able to develop the scientific literacy of members of society.

In this article, using a quasi-experimental method with a one-group pretest and posttest design, the issue of historical literacy of students in a class about the important historical issues of Iran, including the fall of the Safavid dynasty, the Treaty of Turkmenchai, and the construction of the national South-North railroad, was investigated and analyzed. The studied population of this research is the students of the course on Iranian social history of undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Tehran.

The results of the research show that the students’ familiarity with different historical sources and the students’ historical literacy are different in relation to the mentioned important events. One of the results is the difference in students’ views about the Turkmenchai Treaty. In the pretest, most of them thought this treaty was a shameful treaty, but in the posttest, they found a more benevolent attitude towards this treaty.

The study of students’ responses showed that by using panel research to promote students’ historical literacy at the end of the semester, students’ performance in historical empathy and historically fair judgment improved.