Page 154 - Balancing between the present and the past

Chapter 6
and finally demonstrate and reflect on their historical understanding (display and reflection phase). Following this structure, the historical empathy tasks of our study can be presented as historical cases which trigger possible present-oriented perspectives (introduction phase). For example, students can be provided with a description of a European slave trader who treats slaves badly and have to reason if this slave trader risked arrestment. Subsequently, students have to reconstruct a historical context in groups or dyads (investigation phase). Finally, the teacher and the students evaluate the historical case, for example, by reasoning if the slave trader got arrested (display and reflection phase). These lesson activities can be distributed across multiple (e.g., three or four) lessons resulting in more time and flexibility for teachers.
Spreading the lesson activities across different lessons might also motivate students more since there is no repetitive lesson structure. Teachers might also start with basic instructions (e.g., teachers create a historical context and explain the past) in the first lessons and progress to more complex instructions (e.g., students working with historical sources to create a historical context to explain the historical event) in following lessons to motivate students, (e.g., Merriënboer & Kirschner, 2007). One of the teachers suggested a similar approach to prevent a repetitive structure. Moreover, to motivate students it is also important to address differences between students (Ginsberg, 2005; Subban, 2006). Three teachers noted that the intervention does not address these differences. An improvement, for example, could be to provide the guiding questions only to the students who need help in reconstructing a historical context.
An important limitation of our explorative study is the small sample size, especially for the participants in the control condition (two teachers and 30 students). A design using more participants and random sampling would be preferred (cf. Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). Experimental studies should also be repeated in different settings to confirm the findings (Collins, Joseph, & Bielaczyc, 2004). Another limitation is the tests used to measure the students’ ability to perform historical contextualization. The internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) of both instruments is on the lower end of what is considered acceptable. Refining the items by, for example, using thinking aloud protocols could provide insights into ways to increase the internal consistency. Moreover,thetestsmeasuretheabilitytoperformhistoricalcontextualizationatavery basic level. Including History Assessments of Thinking in historical contextualization could provide other insights because these assessments also require student argumentation (Breakstone, Smith, & Wineburg, 2013). The implementation fidelity scores of the experimental condition might also be a limitation since not all lesson
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