Publication Details
Abstract
The ongoing modernization of secondary education in Uzbekistan has intensified the need for pedagogical approaches that move beyond information transmission toward the development of students’ interpretive competence and critical thinking. In history education, this challenge is particularly acute due to the growing plurality of historical narratives and the shift toward competency-based learning. The present study addresses this issue by examining the pedagogical potential of the hermeneutical approach in school history teaching. Using a quasi-experimental design, the research compared the learning outcomes of secondary school students taught through hermeneutical and dialogical strategies with those receiving conventional instruction. Data were collected through structured assessments of historical understanding and critical thinking and analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent samples t-tests. The findings indicate that the implementation of hermeneutical teaching strategies significantly improves students’ ability to interpret historical sources, engage in multi-perspective reasoning, and demonstrate higher levels of critical thinking. Classroom observations further revealed increased dialogical engagement and more active meaning-making among students in the experimental group. The results confirm the effectiveness of the hermeneutical approach as a learner-centered methodological framework in history education. It is recommended that history curricula and teacher professional development programs in Uzbekistan incorporate structured dialogical practices and interpretive source work to support the goals of contemporary competency-based education.