Page 153 - Balancing between the present and the past

6.6 Conclusions and discussion
The aim of this explorative study was to develop a pedagogy and to test it to assess its success in improving students’ ability to perform historical contextualization using a quasi-experimental pre- and post-test design. In contrast to scholars who focused on contextualization as a heuristic to examine historical documents (e.g., Baron, 2016; Reisman, 2012b) or on students’ knowledge and strategies to date historical sources and events (e.g., Van Boxtel & Van Drie, 2012; Wilschut, 2012), we explored whether the teaching strategies of Huijgen, Van de Grift, et al. (2017) could be used to develop a historical contextualization pedagogy. The results of a historical contextualization test showed that students in the experimental condition demonstrated more progress in their ability to perform historical contextualization compared to students in the control condition. A multilevel analysis indicated that the developed pedagogy had a medium effect on students’ ability to perform historical contextualization.
The teachers’ post-intervention interviews indicate that the structure: (1) presenting
a historical case that triggers possible present-oriented perspectives, (2) instructing
students to reconstruct a historical context, and (3) instructing students to use 6 historical context knowledge to evaluate the historical case again, can promote
historical contextualization. Similar approaches have been suggested by scholars
such as Reisman (2012a) and Havekes et al. (2012), but positive indicators of this
approach in promoting students’ ability to perform historical contextualization
were still missing. Moreover, in line with scholars such as Lee and Ashby (2001)
and VanSledright (2001) who argue that historical empathy can promote historical contextualization, our findings seem to illustrate that the historical empathy tasks
helped students perform historical contextualization. The historical empathy tasks
might make historical events more concrete for students (cf. De Leur, Van Boxtel, &
Wilschut, 2017) and let them grasp the “sense of a period,” as Dawson (2009) calls it.
Despite the positive indicators, all teachers noted that the lesson activities took more lesson time than estimated. Especially the historical empathy tasks (which were scheduled at the end of each lesson) were therefore not always completed. Two teachers explicitly stressed that implementing all eight lessons would have left them little time to prepare their students for the formal test. To integrate the historical empathy tasks more within the other lesson activities a structure of Endacott and Pelekanos (2015) can be used where students are first introduced to historical agents (introduction phase), reconstruct a relevant historical context (investigation phase),
A historical contextualization pedagogy
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