Page 60 - Balancing between the present and the past
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                                Chapter 3
is used as surveys and experiments would be unable to provide the rich and deep information about students’ reasoning processes that is necessary to answer our research questions (Creswell, 2009; Macpherson, Brooker, & Ainsworth, 2000). We chose a mixed-method design because combining quantitative and qualitative research provides a better understanding of a research problem or issue than does the use of either research approach alone (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2010). Moreover, we focused on students aged 15–16 because, based on previous research (e.g., Berti et al., 2009; Hartmann & Hasselhorn, 2008), we concluded that students are able to perform HPT at this age, thus enabling us to investigate the reasoning that underlies one’s ability to take a historical perspective.
3.4.2 The HPT instrument
An HPT instrument developed by Hartmann and Hasselhorn (2008) and translated into Dutch by Huijgen et al. (2014) was selected, as this instrument is suitable for research on a large group of students and refers to a historical topic that has been taught to the students participating in this study, thus resulting in sufficient prior knowledge. The HPT instrument consists of a hypothetical scenario referring to the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930s (see Appendix A). The central historical agent in the scenario is a young man (Hannes) who struggles to decide which political party to vote for in the next election. An authentic historical source was not included in the instrument because Hartmann and Hasselhorn (2008) did not want to conflate students’ HPT ability with their ability to understand historical sources. The students’ central assignment was to decide if Hannes is willing to vote for the Nazi Party. In relation to the scenario, Hartmann and Hasselhorn (2008) formulated nine items that corresponded to three categories: the present-oriented perspective (POP), the role of the historical agent (ROA), and historical contextualization (CONT).
These three POP items may trigger possible forms of presentism in the students. For example, the first item, “He definitely will not vote for the NSDAP [National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party]. No one approves of what this party has done to the world,” illustrates knowledge that contemporary society possesses, but the German people living in 1930 did not possess this level of knowledge regarding the Nazi regime. This category aligns with our first conceptualized component of HPT, specifically, applying awareness that a present-oriented perspective might hinder the understanding of people’s actions in the past.
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