Heritage education : exploring the conceptions of teachers and administrators from the perspective of experimental and social science teaching

Abstract

This paper describes a research project into heritage education. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective from within the field of Experimental and Social Science Education, it presents an analysis of teachers' and administrators' conceptions of heritage, its teaching and its dissemination in Spain. A statistical description is provided of the results of a questionnaire. A factor analysis (FA) was applied to explore possible conjectures accounting for the correlations between the variables with respect to both the conceptualisation of heritage and its teaching and dissemination. The results emphasise the relevance of academic background, initial training and professional context with regard to the conceptualisations of heritage held by the different groups.