Page 165 - Balancing between the present and the past

7.3 Research question
The central research question of this study is “What are the effects of a lesson unit, based on a three-stage historical contextualization framework, on 14- to 16-year- old students’ ability to perform historical contextualization?” Since the intervention aimed at promoting historical contextualization, we expect that the intervention helps to increase the use of historical contextualization and to decrease the use of presentism.
7.4 Method
7.4.1 Research design
Based on the three-stage historical contextualization framework, a lesson unit (four
lessons) focusing on Cold War events was developed. To explore the effects of the
lesson unit on changes in students’ ability to perform historical contextualization,
we used a non-equivalent control group pre-test–post-test design (Shadish, Cook, &
Campbell, 2002). A historical contextualization test of six open-ended questions was
constructed to explore the students’ progress in historical contextualization. This test
was administered as a pre- and post-test. The students’ answers to the pre- and post-
tests were qualitatively analyzed using a coding scheme to explore possible progress
in the students’ ability to perform historical contextualization (Krippendorff, 2013). 7
7.4.2 Participants
We asked seven teachers from our professional network to participate in the study. In consultation with the teachers, we decided that four teachers would teach the lesson unit in one of their history classes (experimental condition) and that three teachers would teach the control condition in one of their history classes. Table 24 presents the teachers’ characteristics. All teachers participated voluntarily, held a Master’s degree in history education, and were Dutch nationals. The participating teachers in the experimental condition received a 2-hour training session given by one of the authors to teach the lesson activities in the lesson unit and to conduct the pre- and post-tests. The teachers participating in the control condition received instructions from one of the authors on how to apply the different lesson activities in the control condition and how they had to conduct the pre- and post-tests.
A historical contextualization framework
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