Page 143 - Balancing between the present and the past

historical empathy tasks, we used the theoretical framework of Endacott and Brooks (2013), who argue that effective historical empathy tasks address three components: historical contextualization, affective connections, and perspective adoption. For the New Netherland case, the historical agent was Willem Bosman, a director of the Dutch West-India Company as well as a merchant and slave trader. The students were given a short description of the historical context and historical agent and had to answer a question similar to this: “If you were Willem Bosman, would you fear being prosecuted for crimes against humanity?” This question addresses the three components of the framework of Endacott and Brooks (2013) because the answer requires historical context knowledge (i.e., the economic and political circumstances of the Dutch Republic in the late 17th century), affective connections (i.e., seeking a connection between the life of Willem Bosman and the students’ lives), and adopting the perspective of a historical agent (i.e., understanding Bosman’s beliefs, position, and attitude).
6.4.4.3 Reviewing the pedagogy
Brown (1992) argues that educational interventions must be designed to inform
practice. The intervention must therefore be easily translated from experimental 6 classrooms to average classrooms and from experimental teachers to average
teachers. Considering this important point and to further examine the ecological
validity of the pedagogy, we established a focus group to review the developed
pedagogy for its practical use. In total, 10 history teachers (all with more than 10
years of experience as a history teacher) participated. To structure the discussion, we
presented the lesson activities of the pedagogy and asked the teachers to review each
lesson activity for its practical use.
Most teachers found that the concept of the cases triggered presentism among the students, which was exciting and motivating for the students. However, three teachers had some feedback regarding two cases. Based on suggestions from these teachers, we developed two different cases. The teachers liked the structure of first presenting a case, reconstructing the context, and finally using historical context knowledge to explain the case. The teachers also approved of the historical empathy task but were concerned that it might be too strenuous for the students to cover in one lesson. We ended the discussion by asking for general remarks regarding the pedagogy. In general, the teachers noted that the students’ ability to perform historical contextualization should be increased with the pedagogy. Despite the teachers’ mild concern about the
A historical contextualization pedagogy
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