V. Ya. Shulhin and O. Ya. Yefymenko: new ways of looking at teaching history at school in the middle of the 19th and early 20th centuries (based on the materials kept in the holdings of V. O. Sukhomlynskyi state scientific and pedagogical library of Ukrai

Abstract

Based on the archival documents, research papers and publications kept in the holdings of V. O. Sukhomlynskyi State Scientific and Pedagogical Library of Ukraine, the life path and teaching activity of V. Ya. Shulhin (world history lecturer, the Kyiv St. Volodymyr University) and O. Ya. Yefymenko (Ukrainian history and ethnography researcher) and their contribution to the development of national textbooks are analysed. The peculiarities of methodology developed by V. Shulhin for the world history textbooks used by the Russian Empire secondary schools are described, and the scholar’s views on the organisation of educational material with regard to age peculiarities of child’s perception of information are highlighted. The biography of the scientist and teacher Oleksandra Yakivna Yefymenko and her contribution to the creation of Ukrainian history textbooks are considered. The socio-political realities on the background of which O. Yefymenko developed as a scientist are outlined, her membership in the academic community of that time is determined, and her views on Ukrainian history and the methodology of its teaching in educational institutions are characterised. A source study analysis of her Pochatkovyi pidruchnyk ukrainsko-moskovskoi istorii: dlia shkil narodnykh (Textbook on Ukrainian-Moscow history for public schools) was carried out. The originality of the textbook structure is emphasised: O. Yefymenko did not use the traditional chronological way of presenting teaching material; she stressed the effectiveness of spatio-temporal principle taking into account the peculiarities of pupils’ perception of information.