Page 181 - Balancing between the present and the past

The framework seemed to teach students in the experimental condition 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. Wineburg (2001) already noted that historical thinking is an unnatural act and that it should be taught to students in history classrooms. Our findings seem to illustrate this. In line with research into other historical reasoning competencies (e.g., Nokes, Dole, & Hacker, 2007; Reisman, 2012b; Stoel, Van Drie, & Van Boxtel, 2017), students need to explicitly be taught how to engage in historical reasoning. If students are not taught explicit historical contextualization, they might keep viewing the past from a present-oriented perspective, which often results in misunderstanding historical events and agents’ actions (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Lévesque, 2008).
The framework also might “unblock” students’ historical context knowledge since
some students might already possess this knowledge, which they used in the post-test
questions, but did not use this because of a dominant present-oriented perspective
when answering the pre-test questions. Further research is needed to examine
the unblocking function of the framework and which types of context knowledge
students use and do not use when performing historical contextualization. Thinking
aloud protocols (e.g., Van Someren, Barnard, & Sandberg, 1994) can be used to
examine students’ reasoning in more detail when answering historical questions.
Moreover, the framework might have taught students to become aware of how they
can approach a historical question or assignment. The students in the experimental 7 condition not only displayed a less present-oriented perspective and applied more
historical contextualization in their post-test answers but also explicitly mentioned, for example, that a moral judgement cannot be made without considering the historical context. Seixas and Morton (2013) consider this a “demonstration of powerful understanding” (p. 189) which contributes to thinking historically.
Students in the experimental condition also used more historical context knowledge after the intervention. In particular, they used more chronological knowledge, such as considering the specific time period or sequencing historical events to answer the post-test questions. This often resulted in a shift from a present-oriented perspective towards a historically contextualized perspective. Dawson (2009) argues that chronological knowledge could contribute to a “sense of a period.” By explicitly considering knowledge of characteristics of a particular historical period, students might become aware that there are differences in values, beliefs, and knowledge in
A historical contextualization framework
179