37 © 2008 The University of North Carolina Press A Vision of History Teaching and Learning: Thoughts on History Education in Secondary Schools Kaya YILMAZ, Ph.D. Marmara University This article presents a vision of effective and pedagogically meaningful history teaching and learning in schools. Bringing to the fore the lack of attention to the philosophy of his- tory, the article first explains the philosophical and epistemological underpinnings of history or the perspectives on the nature of historical knowledge on which the vision is based. It then elucidates what goals history education should strive for, what history should be taught, how history curriculum should be developed, what is expected of teachers in implementing history curriculum, and what qualifications history teachers should possess to effectively practice their profession. It advo- cates constructivist pedagogy and the discipli- nary approach to school history, calling for collaboration between education faculty and historians in the preparation of history teach- ers. Introduction Any given vision of history education in sec- ondary and high schools is supposed to draw on philosophy of history, different learning the- ories, the conceptual and empirical works on history education, and the realities of actual social studies or history classrooms. Therefore, the vision of effective and pedagogically mean- ingful history education offered in this article is based on different schools of historical thought, theoretical frameworks for thinking about teaching and learning, research findings on his- tory education, and the implications of both theoretical and empirical works for the teaching and learning of history in schools. A vision of history teaching and learning first and foremost necessitates an adequate explana- tion about one’s philosophy of history as a dis- cipline in that epistemological and conceptual frameworks shape and color one’s approach to dealing with issues in history education. Hence, I first define history and then elucidate my per- spective on the nature of historical knowledge to provide the epistemological and philosophi- cal basis of effective history education in schools.