Patrimonios en conflicto, competencias cívicas y formación profesional en educación primaria

This paper presents the results of a study on the development of the professional competence of students training to become primary education teachers. This study is based on incorporating research on immaterial, invisible or hidden heritage into education. The results are contrasted with those obtained when applying the model in the primary classroom during teaching practice. The objective of the study was to test whether heritage education can become an effective tool in the initial stages of teacher training and in the development of civic behaviour among primary school pupils. Our basis is a concept of heritage which transcends the traditional historical-artistic dimension. We have incorporated research on uncomfortable or conflictive aspects of heritage, such as places relating to the memory of the Spanish Civil War. Our interpretative research followed a qualitative methodology, thereby making the ethnographic method compatible with the case study. Attention was paid both to the process followed in teacher training classes at university and its subsequent application and development in the primary education classroom. Two types of samples were selected for the study, both of which were incidental. The first consisted of a group of 74 teacher training students. In the second, a case study was carried out analysing the results of two of those students who, during their period of teaching practice, worked in collaboration with two groups of pupils from the 4th and 5th years of primary education in a small rural village. The trainee teachers employed and developed a teaching and learning model incorporating both the rational and emotional dimensions of heritage in order to construct identities, which they then applied with success in the primary classroom.