Page 111 - Balancing between the present and the past

history exam program of these educational tracks demands that students examine the differences between past and present and create a historical context when interpreting historical events (Board of Tests and Examinations, 2017). Moreover, we focus on students aged 14 to 17 years old because these students possess the historical content knowledge necessary to perform historical contextualization successfully (e.g., Hartmann & Hasselhorn, 2008).
To examine the research question, we formulated the following two hypotheses:
1.
2.
5.4
5.4.1
Since historical contextualization is considered a key component of historical thinking and reasoning and is included in the Dutch formal history curriculum, we expect that the teachers in our sample will demonstrate historical contextualization in their lessons.
Since research indicates that many teachers focus on the transmission
of historical content knowledge, we expect that the teachers in our 5 sample seldom encourage their students to engage in historical
contextualization processes themselves.
Method
Research design
History teachers and historical contextualization
To answer our research question, we used systematic observational measurement (Suen & Ary, 2014; Yoder & Symons, 2010). This approach allowed us to examine the data within the situation in which the activities took place (i.e., the classroom). Other methods, such as interviews, student and teacher questionnaires, or self-reports, did not offer this option (George & Bennett, 2004). Moreover, despite its labor-intensive nature, classroom observation is viewed as a more unbiased form of data collection to examine teacher behavior compared to other methods (Pianta & Hamre, 2009). This is stressed by VanSledright, Kelly, and Meuwissen (2006), who argue that teachers in interviews often talk about “idealized versions of practice” (p. 220) instead of what actually happens in their classrooms.
5.4.2 Research context
In the Netherlands, students receive elementary education from ages 4 to 12. They are educated in, for example, history, writing, reading, geography, and science. Around
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