Page 179 - Balancing between the present and the past

In the post-test, she answered, “I chose statement I because he [the plantation owner] killed somebody. I did not choose statement II because one should live in freedom and slavery is illegal.” The students in the control group, such as Thalia and Anna, had difficulty setting aside their personal emotions, values, and beliefs. Whereas students in the experimental condition (such as David and Emma) shifted from a present- oriented perspective towards a historical contextualized perspective, the students in the control condition (such as Thalia and Anna) continued viewing the past with their current values, beliefs and knowledge. This indicates that presentism might remain the dominant perspective when not teaching students explicitly to perform historical contextualization (e.g., by providing guiding questions and creating opportunities to practice historical contextualization).
A distinction can be made between chronological, spatial, socio-political, socio-
economic, and socio-cultural context knowledge. The framework used in the experimental condition aimed to encourage the use of these frames of reference to
reconstruct a historical context by providing guiding questions (see Appendix G).
Spatial context knowledge was rarely used in the answers of the pre- and post-test
questions (in total, 12 explicit references to spatial context knowledge). Moreover, we
did not notice a large progression in the use of socio-political, socio-economic, and socio-cultural knowledge in the experimental condition. Most progression was found
in the use of chronological knowledge. The students in the experimental condition
used far more chronological knowledge in the post-test compared to the pre-test to 7 answer the test questions. This knowledge mostly occurred in the form of sequencing
historical events and mentioning a specific year or time period, often resulting in a shift from a present-oriented perspective towards a more historical and contextualized one. For example, Robert provided a present-oriented perspective when answering the fourth question in the pre-test: “I chose statement I because what the plantation owner did is not allowed, and therefore, he should be punished [...].” In the post-test, Robert considered the chronological context of the 19th century more and proceeded to answer as follows:
I chose statement II because at that specific time it was more normal to treat your slaves that way. I did not choose statement I because the law did not view slavery as something bad, so he [the plantation owner] could not be arrested for this.
A historical contextualization framework
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