Page 191 - Balancing between the present and the past

evaluating two lessons seems to be the most effective method for research purposes. For formative teacher evaluations, a reliable scoring design in which two observers each evaluate two lessons or three observers each evaluate one lesson is most effective.
Study 4: How do history teachers promote historical contextualization in their classrooms?
The FAT-HC was used in this study by five trained raters to observe eight history teachers twice. The FAT-HC items were divided into eight categories while distinguishing between items that demonstrate historical contextualization and items that focus on engaging students in historical contextualization processes. The results of this study indicated that the teachers in the sample did not explicitly promote historical contextualization in the lessons. No teacher obtained a mean FAT-HC score > 2.00 on a 4-point scale. The teachers mainly demonstrated historical contextualization, while engaging students in historical contextualization processes was observed far less often. The highest scores could be found in the categories that focused on avoiding anachronisms and presenting the past as progress (mean score = 3.59) and the category that focused on reconstructing the historical context (mean score = 2.18). All other categories obtained mean scores < 2.00, with the category that focused on promoting students to use historical empathy (mean score = 1.25) and the category that focused on promoting students to use the historical context to explain the past (mean score = 1.24) displaying the lowest scores.
8.1.3 Promoting historical contextualization with classroom materials
The fourth study indicated that history teachers often did not engage students in
historical contextualization. To help teachers, the final two studies (Chapters 6 and 8 7) explored the effectiveness of various practical tools to improve students’ ability to
perform historical contextualization.
Studies 5 and 6: What are the effects of a lesson unit designed to promote secondary school students’ ability to perform historical contextualization?
In the fifth study the framework for teaching historical contextualization was used to formulate four design principles: (1) raising students’ awareness of the consequences of a present-oriented perspective when examining the past, (2) enhancing the reconstruction of a historical context, (3) enhancing the use of a historical context to explain historical phenomena, and (4) enhancing historical empathy. These principles were used to develop a lesson unit focusing on the 17th and 18th centuries, which was
General conclusions and discussion
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