Page 54 - Balancing between the present and the past
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Chapter 3
Despite the importance of HPT in enhancing students’ historical thinking and promoting citizenship among students, recent research has indicated that students may struggle when asked to perform thinking skills, such as HPT (e.g., Beyer, 2008; Huijgen, Van Boxtel, Van de Grift, & Holthuis, 2014; Reisman & Wineburg, 2008; Van Boxtel & Van Drie, 2012), and that history teachers may lack the requisite knowledge to promote historical reasoning competencies, such as HPT (e.g., Achinstein & Fogo, 2015; Bain & Mirel, 2006; Grant & Gradwell, 2010). Moreover, valid assignments and measurement instruments to assess students’ historical reasoning competencies, such as HPT, are scarce (Breakstone, 2014; Reich, 2009; Rothstein, 2004; VanSledright, 2013). Therefore, to understand how students learn history and how they improve as a result of such learning, more information is needed regarding how students reason when performing historical reasoning competency tasks and regarding the development of instruments that operationalize this type of reasoning (Hartmann & Hasselhorn, 2008; Huijgen et al., 2014).
In this study, which uses an HPT instrument developed by Hartmann and Hasselhorn (2008), the ability of 15- and 16-year-old pre-university students (n = 143) to contextualize the actions of people in the past was assessed. Furthermore, we explored, using thinking-aloud methodology, how a sample of 15- and 16-year-old students (n = 36) reasoned to uncover their contextualization process when working with the HPT instrument. The results of this study provide insights into the difficulties students experience when engaging in HPT and into the validity and reliability of HPT classroom assignments, thereby helping teachers to promote their students’ ability to perform HPT.
3.2 Theoretical framework
3.2.1 HPT: a conceptualization
Because of the critical role HPT plays in students’ understanding of history and in promoting the competencies students need to successfully participate in civic life, the ability to perform HPT is incorporated into the formal K-12 history curricula of, for example, the United Kingdom (Cooper & Chapman, 2009; Department for Education, 2013), Australia (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2014), Canada (Peck & Seixas, 2008), Germany (Hartmann & Hasselhorn, 2008), Finland (Rantala, 2011), Belgium (Wils & Verschaffel, 2012), and the Netherlands (Van Boxtel
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