Page 100 - Balancing between the present and the past

Chapter 4
In addition to the function of the research instrument and feedback instrument, the instrument could be used as a framework for teachers who want to reshape and improve their instruction on historical contextualization. Slavin (1996) noted that teachers who explicitly model and scaffold their instructions contribute to their students’ academic success. The instrument’s strategies and items could provide direction for designing meaningful learning tasks and scaffolds for students. This is important, especially because, as noted by Grant and Gradwell (2010), many history teachers focus on recalling factual knowledge despite the fact that the teaching and learning of history includes far more activities, such as investigating sources and evaluating the past (VanSledright, 2008). Bain and Mirel (2006) and Saye and Social Studies Inquiry Research Collaborative (2013), therefore, argued that instruction models that help teachers learn how to promote students’ ability to perform historical contextualization or other historical reasoning competencies are needed. In a post- observation interview, one of our observed teachers noted that he now uses the instrument as a checklist when designing his lessons. Prior to the study, he would forget the spatial context of historical phenomena. However, he now structurally includes the geographical context in his lessons when reconstructing the historical context of phenomena.
Despite the positive indicators of the instrument’s reliability, some limitations must be acknowledged. We used a research design with only five observers and five teachers, who participated voluntary and, thus, might be more eager to learn (Desimone, 2009; Desimone, Smith, & Ueno, 2006). More observers, teachers, and lessons (cf. Hill et al., 2012) are needed to provide greater insight into the instrument’s dimensionality, reliability, and optimal scoring design. Including teachers and observers with more varied backgrounds (e.g., differences in gender, student performance, age, and educational qualification) might also provide useful insights to further strengthen the instrument and scoring design. Furthermore, when examining the instrument’s reliability, nearly 35% of the variance (residual) could not be explained by teacher, observer, or lesson variance. Future research and analyses must be conducted to decrease the residual variance and achieve greater reliability.
The observers also noted that it is difficult to evaluate 40 items when observing one history lesson. Because the observation instrument must be practical and suitable for observing a single lesson, more research is needed to decrease the number of items while maintaining good reliability. A larger G-study including a D-study, which
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