Highlights of Teaching - Comics in History Education:Developing Historical Conciousness

The development of China's Old-Democratic Revolution is a relatively complicated content in history teaching of Modern China, which mainly contains two clues: the history of aggression against China and the history of resistance. In class, 1-2 students were invited to sort out the historical clues about four important wars of aggression against China and unequal treaties, as well as the actions of different classes of society, by using these comics. Students can extract information from it and take it as a part of their historical framework, and gradually develop logical thinking in traditional narrative structure.

Comic learning can be seen as an accessible way for understanding these heavy contents. Comics can be valuable for teaching civics and social studies or as first-hand accounts for consideration. Some interesting ones even develop one or two new perspectives. On one hand, students could read multiple accounts of an event and think critically about which provides more reliable information; On the other hand, students can find out the characteristics of different revolutionary movements through the compelling narrative and visuals, and the texts as the clues. By integrating and using different kinds of historical resources, history teacher can cultivate students' sensitive thinking about historical evidence, including building and developing their historical consciousness for senior high school students aged 15-17.