Page 144 - Balancing between the present and the past
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Chapter 6
length of the lesson unit, we chose to maintain the length of the intervention (eight lessons) because a shorter intervention may not result in a deeper understanding of the concept of historical contextualization (e.g., Reisman & Wineburg, 2008).
6.4.5 The control condition
To test the pedagogy, a control condition was designed using previous research in which we observed how teachers promote historical contextualization (Huijgen et al., 2018). In most of the observed lessons, the teachers first activated the students’ prior knowledge by asking the students questions. Next, the teachers explained a historical event by reconstructing the historical context. Finally, the students had to finish the history textbook assignments, which were also evaluated after completion. We therefore used this lesson structure as the core for the control condition lessons. Dutch history textbooks do not contain assignments focusing explicitly on historical contextualization. Table 21 presents an overview of the different lessons in the experimental and control conditions. This first lesson of both conditions after the pre-test is described in more detail since the following lessons have the same lesson structure and activities but differ in historical topic.
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