Page 152 - Balancing between the present and the past

Chapter 6
the teachers skipped the historical empathy tasks the most because these tasks were scheduled at the end of each lesson. Each teacher, however, conducted at least four of the eight historical empathy tasks.
Secondly, all teachers noted that students became demotivated after three or four lessons due to the repetitive lesson structure. Instead of a repetitive structure, Ben suggested to use only four lessons and to present in the first lesson a historical case that might trigger present-oriented perspectives and an accompanying explanatory question. After the case has been discussed, the teacher could stress the danger of presentism, explain the importance of historical contextualization, and model historical contextualization (for example, by discussing the guidelines of Appendix F). This lesson is followed by two lessons where the students and teacher work together on reconstructing the historical context to answer the question of the historical case. In the fourth and final lesson, the teacher evaluates the answer to the question of the historical case with the students.
Finally, Lisa, Ben, and Wendy suggested to focus more on the differences between individual students because some of their students were already aware of the consequences of presentism while others viewed historical events from a dominant present-oriented perspective. Lisa suggested to use a different lesson structure to address student differences:
Teachers might present a central historical case or problem and instruct students in groups to examine the historical case on their own rather than discussing the historical case directly in a classroom discussion. This provides the opportunity to evaluate how the different groups perform historical contextualization and then I can provide more customized instructions when students ask for help. For example, when groups keep viewing the past from present-oriented perspectives, I can explain the consequences of presentism to this group. When the students do not know how to reconstruct a historical context, I can provide a handout with the frames of reference as guiding questions.
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