Page 115 - Balancing between the present and the past

History teachers and historical contextualization
voluntary in the study. They all held the Dutch nationality and a Master’s degree in history education. All observers received 4 hours of training in the use of the FAT-HC. Three videotaped history lessons taught by three different history teachers were used as training material. These lessons were not used in our data analyses. The observers received an introduction and explanation of the FAT-HC items and evaluated the videotaped lessons using a training version of the observation instrument that included more in-depth explanations of the items. After the observers observed each videotaped lesson, their results were discussed, and some items were clarified by the trainers to minimize inter-rater bias. The items “The teacher creates historical tension (the past as different),” “The teacher moves the self into the past (if I...),” and “The teacher outlines a recognizable role for students to foster historical empathy (as a businessman / like a father)” needed the most clarification.
5.4.6 Data analysis
First, to examine the extent to which the history teachers promoted historical 5 contextualization, we calculated the observers’ mean FAT-HC score for each lesson.
Next, based on two lessons, we calculated a category mean score for each teacher
to examine the differences between the different categories. This also provided
an opportunity to examine the extent to which the history teachers demonstrated historical contextualization and engaged students in historical contextualization processes. Finally, we analyzed the videotaped lessons to identify examples that illustrate our findings.
5.5 Results
5.5.1 FAT-HC scores
To examine how the eight history teachers promoted historical contextualization in their lessons, we present the observers’ mean FAT-HC scores in Table 17. Most teachers obtained similar FAT-HC scores in their different lessons except Kim, Anna, and Nick. If FAT-HC scores > 2.00 denote a positive verdict and scores < 2.00 denote a negative verdict, no teacher in the sample obtained a positive mean FAT-HC score, which was the opposite of what we expected.
113