Practice of historical reeanactment in the course of Turkish revolution and Kemalism at the 11th grade of the high school: An action research

Theoretical knowledge related to historical reenactment is presented in this research because this research is the first one about practice of historical reenactment in the history education. How the historical reenactment will be practiced in the lesson of History of Turkish Revolution and Kemalism, what kind of changes will be seen about the students' historical empathy skills, group communication, their ideas towards history and levels of getting knowledge have been mentioned in the context of the research.This research designed as an action research which is one of the qualitative research approaches was realized with the students at the eleventh grade in Gazi Çiftliği High School in fifteen weeks and it participated as the researcher executive in the process. The practice process was realized with fourty students; however, analysis of the data was focused on six students.The activities enabling the studens to discover the knowledge about the historical events seen before Atatürk came to Ankara were practiced in the process of the research. Improvement in the students' historical empathy skills was analysed week by week through the table formed by considering the studies of Dickinson and Lee (1978); Ashby and Lee (1987) (cit.: Karabağ, 2010:119?122). Changes in the students' ideas towards history were determined through the compositions the students wrote after and before the practice, the semi-structured interviews made every week and students' diaries. The change in the students' levels of getting knowledge about the historical reenactment determined was evaluated through an examination which was prepared according to Bloom's taxonomy and included six questions. The findings for the group communication were evaluated through the semi-structured interviews made every week, students' diaries and the researcher's diary.In the light of the findings obtained in the end of the practice, it was determined that the practice of historical reenactment led to a positive change in the students' historical empathy levels, it caused a positive change in the students' ideas for studying cooperatively and succeeding a work as a group, the students' ideas for history changed in the positive way and they profoundly obtained knowledge about the historical imagery in the end of the process.Key Words: Historical education, Historical reenactment, Historical empathy, Group communication, Obtaining Knowledge, Educational Theatre, Dramatization, Creative Drama, Simulation.