TEACHERS’ EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE AND PEDAGOGICAL INNOVATION IN HISTORY TEACHING

Abstract

This article discusses how teachers’ experiential knowledge can support consistent processes of pedagogical innovation in History teaching, understanding innovation not as the occasional adoption of techniques, but as the intentional reorganization of didactic work based on reflection on practice and the concrete demands of the classroom. Drawing on a theoretical-analytical approach, it argues that the professional knowledge of the History teacher is produced at the intersection of training knowledge, curricular knowledge, and experiential knowledge, and that innovation gains depth when it recognizes this professional heritage and converts it into justified didactic decisions that are sensitive to historical time, languages, and the mediations required for historical thinking. It is maintained that experience, when critically thematized and narrated, operates,as a source of intelligibility for teaching action, fostering fine adjustments in planning, source selection, problematization, and assessment, with impacts on historical learning and student participation. It is also argued that pedagogical innovation in History requires collective professional capital, institutional conditions, and a school culture that authorizes responsible experimentation, combining historiographical rigor and pedagogical relevance. Finally, an integrated understanding is proposed in which innovation emerges as an unfolding of the reflective teacher who transforms experience into shareable knowledge, articulating aims of historical education, student autonomy, and the public meaning of the past.