Page 17 - Balancing between the present and the past

The third problem is the need for practical tools that can help teachers promote 1 historical contextualization among their students. Classroom materials that are based
upon research are missing because design and intervention studies on teaching and
learning historical reasoning competencies such as historical contextualization are
scarce. This situation has resulted in a call from scholars to develop and test domain- specific practices and tools that can promote historical thinking and reasoning (e.g., Fogo, 2014; Grant & Gradwell, 2010; Reisman & Fogo, 2016; Reisman et al., 2018). The third and final challenge is therefore to develop and to test classroom materials that promote historical contextualization among students.
1.2 Theoretical framework
The central topic of the thesis is historical contextualization. This section, therefore, first defines this ability and describes its important role in historical thinking and reasoning processes. Subsequently, this section presents a theoretical framework for teaching historical contextualization. That theoretical framework is used in the different studies of this thesis.
1.2.1 Defining historical contextualization
Historical contextualization is about understanding the differences between past and present (Seixas & Peck, 2004). It requires an understanding of the social, political, and cultural values of the time period under investigation and knowledge of the events leading up to the historical situation as well as other relevant events occurring at the same time (Endacott & Brooks, 2013). By no means should historical contextualization lead to relativism among students, such as the justification of controversial actions by people in the past. Rather, it should help students to make reasoned ethical judgements and to understand and explain historical phenomena and the actions of people (Seixas & Morton, 2013).
Some studies define historical contextualization as one of the heuristics that can be applied (in addition to corroboration, close reading, and sourcing) to examine historical sources (e.g., Baron, 2016; Nokes, Dole, & Hacker, 2007; Reisman, 2012a; Wineburg, 1998). However, in history education, it is possible to contextualize historical events, developments, sources, and agents’ actions (Havekes, Coppen, Luttenberg, & Van Boxtel, 2012). Therefore, in this study, we use the definition of Van Boxtel and Van Drie
General introduction
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