Page 109 - Balancing between the present and the past

History teachers and historical contextualization
also have focused on how students’ ability to perform historical contextualization can be advanced. Huijgen, Van Boxtel, Van de Grift, & Holthuis (2017) found indicators that secondary school students (15- and 16-year-olds) who combined different frames of reference were more successful in explaining historical agents’ decisions. Baron (2016) concluded that a visual coding system based on the use of reliable visual cues to establish a historical time period may help students contextualize historical documents. Van Boxtel and Van Drie (2012) found that students between the ages of 14 and 17 who connected images or textual elements with key historical concepts or knowledge of landmarks were able to create a historical context of historical images and documents with greater success.
5.2.3 Teaching historical contextualization
Not much is, however, known about how history teachers promote historical contextualization in classrooms. Seixas (1998) found that pre-service history teachers incorporated documents in their lesson plans that showed that thinking in the past 5 differed to present thinking. However, different studies on history teacher classroom
behavior convey the general image of a teacher who mostly uses the history textbook narratives and focuses on the transmission of historical content knowledge (Barton & Levstik, 2003; Saye & Social Studies Inquiry Research Collaborative, 2013). This “traditional” approach of history education appears to focus on students’ ability to memorize (nationally) significant figures, events, and narratives (Carretero, Asensio, & Rodriguez-Moneo, 2012; Symcox & Wilschut, 2009).
Huijgen, Van de Grift, et al. (2017) developed and tested a domain-specific observation instrument focusing on historical contextualization called the Framework for Analyzing the Teaching of Historical Contextualization (FAT-HC). Their instrument was based on four teaching strategies on historical contextualization. The first strategy is reconstructing the historical context. Students need to possess historical context knowledge, including knowledge about chronology and spatial, and socio- economic, socio-cultural, and socio-political developments before they can perform historical contextualization successfully. The second strategy is increasing historical empathy—for example, by selecting a historical agent relevant to the topic under study and focusing on the role and position of the historical agent in society and promoting students’ affective connections with the historical agent. The third strategy is enhancing the use of historical context knowledge. Not only do students have to reconstruct a historical context, they also must use it, for example, to determine
107