Page 16 - Balancing between the present and the past

Chapter 1
Despite the importance of historical contextualization, history education professionals are faced with three major problems: (1) the lack of standardized instruments that can provide insight into how students of different ages and educational levels perform historical contextualization, (2) the absence of domain-specific observation instruments that can provide insight into how teachers promote historical contextualization in classrooms, and (3) the lack of classroom materials that can help teachers to improve their students’ ability to perform historical contextualization.
The first problem focuses on measuring students’ ability to perform historical contextualization. Students often view the past from a contemporary or present- oriented perspective, for example, when debating the issue if the United States will always remain the most powerful country in the world (Foster, Ashby, & Lee, 2008) or when trying to understand involuntary teenage marriages during the 15th century (Angvik & Von Borries, 1997). Research in social psychology indicates that youngsters especially suffer from the curse of knowledge, a cognitive bias that makes it difficult for students who have more knowledge to think from the perspective of less informed people (Birch & Bloom, 2007). Despite the fact that research has been conducted on how historians and students perform historical contextualization (e.g., Van Boxtel & Van Drie, 2012; Wineburg, 1998), there are not many standardized instruments available to test their ability to do so. The lack of such instruments could result in a shortage of systematic assessments of students’ progression in historical reasoning competencies (Peck & Seixas, 2008). Several scholars therefore argue for new assessment formats to make sense of how students learn history and how they improve in learning history (e.g., Breakstone, 2014; Ercikan & Seixas, 2015; Reich, 2009; VanSledright, 2013). The first challenge is therefore to develop and test instruments that can examine student differences in the ability to perform historical contextualization.
The second problem is that not much is known about how history teachers promote historical contextualization in their classrooms. Since research indicates that teachers seem to struggle to develop meaningful and activating learning tasks that promote students’ historical reasoning competencies (e.g., Barton & Levstik, 2003; Reisman, 2015; Saye & Social Studies Inquiry Research Collaborative, 2013; VanSledright, 2008), an observation instrument that can examine teachers’ instructions with regard to historical contextualization is essential. Therefore, a second challenge is the construction of such an instrument and the use of it to explore how history teachers promote historical contextualization in classrooms.
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