Page 197 - Balancing between the present and the past

a different country. However, the study also showed the complexity of constructing a new valid and reliable instrument when using the format of Hartmann and Hasselhorn (2008). Moreover, the second study, using thinking-aloud protocols, indicated that it is very important to formulate unambiguous items to construct valid and reliable instruments. The fifth study showed that it might be possible to measure the ability to perform historical contextualization with multiple-choice items. These items, however, measure historical contextualization at a very basic level; do students view the past from a present-oriented perspective or not? The sixth study tried to measure historical contextualization with open-ended questions. This approach seems promising, but more insight into the items’ reliability and validity is needed.
Despite the fact that some empirical research has been conducted on how students contextualize historical phenomena and agents’ actions (e.g., Berti, Baldin, Toneatti, 2009; Lee & Ashby, 2001), large-scale research studies on how students of different ages and educational levels perform historical contextualization are scarce in history education research. A second contribution of this thesis is that the first study provided more insight into these differences. Especially in the Dutch educational context, not much had been known about how upper elementary, lower secondary, and upper secondary students performed historical contextualization. This thesis also argues that we need to adopt a balanced attitude to statements that students view the past from a present-oriented perspective (cf. Lévesque, 2008; Seixas & Morton, 2013; Wineburg, 2001). Some young students in the first study performed elements of historical contextualization successfully, and most students included in the second study succeeded in contextualizing the actions of the historical agent.
A third contribution is that this thesis seems to confirm the views of scholars such as 8 Reisman and Wineburg (2008) and Van Boxtel and Van Drie (2012) who argue that
historical content knowledge is necessary to perform historical contextualization
successfully. For example, the first and second studies displayed significant
correlations between students’ historical content knowledge (prior topic knowledge) and their instruments’ scores. In addition to previous research, the results of the second study indicate that combining different types of knowledge (i.e., frames of reference) might improve the ability to perform historical contextualization and that students do not consider spatial knowledge and knowledge about the role of historical agents in particular. The thesis also argues (in the sixth study) that students might possess historical context knowledge on a particular topic but that this knowledge
General conclusions and discussion
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