Page 55 - Balancing between the present and the past
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                                & Grever, 2011). Though in many states of the United States, HPT and similar reasoning competencies have appeared to play only a marginal role in the formal curricula (e.g.,
Evans, 2011; VanSledright, 2008; Wineburg, 2001), with the recent development of
The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards
(National Council for the Social Studies, 2013), more attention, in the near future, may
be given to implementing reasoning competencies, such as HPT, in state curricula.
For example, two objectives of the C3 Framework are that, by the end of Grade 12,
students will be able to “analyze complex and interacting factors that influenced the 3 perspectives of people during different historical eras” and “analyze how historical
Contextualizing historical agents’ actions
 contexts shaped and continue to shape people’s perspectives” (p. 47).
In the literature, different definitions of HPT exist. For example, Seixas and Morton (2013) defined HPT as an attempt to see through the eyes of people who lived in other times and circumstances that are sometimes far removed from our present- day lives. Levstik (2001) defined HPT as the ability to see how people acted in the past and understand why they acted as they did. To achieve HPT, scholars stress the importance of understanding the social, cultural, intellectual, and emotional settings that shaped people’s lives and actions (e.g., Lee & Ashby, 2001; Seixas & Peck, 2004). Moreover, it must be emphasized that knowledge and understanding of chronology are important for successful HPT (Yeager & Foster, 2001).
Accordingly, HPT is a complex historical reasoning competency that consists of several components. From the extant literature, we identify three interrelated components needed to successfully perform HPT. These include applying the awareness that a present-oriented perspective might hinder the understanding of people’s actions in the past, demonstrating historical empathy, and reconstructing an adequate historical context.
The first component is to be aware of a possible present-oriented perspective and the consequences of this perspective when examining the past. Present-oriented thinking, or presentism, is the bias by which people assume that the same goals, intentions, attitudes, and beliefs that exist in the present day existed in the past (Barton & Levstik, 2004). Forms of displaying a present-oriented perspective include viewing people in the past as stupid or assuming that people in the past had the same knowledge available to them that we currently have (Lee & Ashby, 2001; Shemilt, 1983). This perspective could cause misconceptions that lead to incorrect conclusions about
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