Page 177 - Balancing between the present and the past

experimental and control condition in the use of contextualization. This analysis indicates that the gain scores of the students in the experimental condition differ significantly from those of the students in the control group (F(1,167) = 9.09, p = .003, = .05, which is considered a small effect; Cohen, 1988). The students in the experimental group show improvement in the use of contextualization, whereas students in the control group show a slight decrease in the use of contextualization. The difference between both groups in the post-test is significant (t = 3.37, p = .001,
= .06, which is considered a medium effect; Cohen, 1988).
7.5.2 Students’ improvement in historical contextualization
The frequency analysis indicates that students in the experimental condition improved
more in historical contextualization than students in the control condition. To further
explore how they might have improved during the intervention, the students’ answers
were qualitatively analyzed. Overall, the students in the experimental condition
displayed less presentism in the post-test questions compared to their answers in
the pre-test questions. The framework used in the experimental condition seemed
to teach students to set aside their present-oriented perspectives and to explicitly
consider the differences in values, beliefs, and knowledge between the past and the
present when answering the test questions. For example, David answered in the pre-
test to the fifth question about the position of women in the 1950s: “I agree with Sophie.
People were stupid back then. Women have the same rights as men. Some women
could even be better than some men.” In the post-test, David no longer viewed the 7 past from a present-oriented perspective and provided a historical explanation in his
answer: “I do not agree with Sophie. At that specific time [1950s], a woman was viewed as less than a man. When women married, they had to do all of the housekeeping, and the man was the breadwinner.” Another example is Emma’s answer to the fourth question of the pre-test about slavery: “I chose statement I because Simpson and his family were heavily abused, and this was not acceptable.” In the post-test, she included more specific historical circumstances: “I chose statement II because at that time [18th century], it was more normal to keep and trade slaves. Nobody did anything because it was more common in society.”
Another interesting finding is that although students such as David and Emma might possess historical context knowledge, this knowledge might be “blocked” by a dominant present-oriented perspective. David and Emma might already have had some knowledge of the historical context since they answered the questions
A historical contextualization framework
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