The historical consciousness of first year education students as it relates to the past

Abstract

Older generations have often looked down on their younger counter parts believing that they have little awareness of the sacrifices made by those coming before them and that they have no awareness of the past and no drive to learn about it. However, are these youths really as unaware as the older generations like to think? A country like South Africa has a unique past that was characterised by gross human rights violations under the apartheid regime, specifically during the second half of the 20th century. These born-frees may not have been directly exposed to apartheid but because democratic South Africa is still in its infancy the legacy of those times still impacts them greatly. This qualitative study was informed by the interpretivist paradigm and was underpinned by a relativist ontology and a subjectivist epistemology. This case study made use of the sense of the past of the first-year students enrolled at the Faculty of Education in 2017. A secondary data analysis of two questions from a twelve-question, open-ended written survey collected in 2017 was used to explore the first-year, Faculty of Education students’ historical consciousness as it relates to the past. Convenience sampling was used during the data collection during 2017 when the 700 surveys were collected. After the electronic transcription of these responses. I selected 150 responses from two questions, totalling 300 responses that were analysed. An inductive data analysis method and open coding was used which revealed emergent and dominant themes that were not predetermined. A majority of the responses tended towards negative themes while only some found the past to be better than the present. My study showed that the first-year, Faculty of Education students have a historical consciousness of the past that is orientated from a presentist position. The historical consciousness of these first-year students was dominated by race and used the last forty years of the recent past in its construction. The historical consciousness of these youths was personalised and diversified by a variety of themes and was based on emotional views more than historically factual ones. Furthermore, I illustrate that these future teachers are trapped in the legacy of the past but strive to achieve a bright future so that they can move forward from the past and the effects by which they are burdened.