Page 192 - Balancing between the present and the past

Chapter 8
tested through a quasi-experimental pre-test–post-test design with an experimental and a control condition (N = 131). The mean students’ age was 16 years in both conditions. To raise awareness of possible present-oriented perspectives, a historical case was presented at the start of the lesson. This case relates to a historical phenomenon that students find difficult to explain due to present-oriented perspectives (e.g., the exchange of the colony of New Netherland for Suriname). In the next classroom activity, the historical context of the case was reconstructed using guiding questions. This exercise was followed by a classroom activity wherein the students were asked to use their newly acquired historical context knowledge to interpret the historical case again. Finally, the students conducted historical empathy tasks focusing on a relevant historical agent. A multiple-choice historical contextualization test was constructed to compare students’ ability before and after the intervention. The analyses of pre- and post-test scores indicated that in the experimental condition, students’ ability to perform historical contextualization significantly increased compared to that of students in the control condition. Moreover, the teachers who taught the intervention experienced that the practical implementation of the different design principles promoted historical contextualization.
In the sixth study, the framework for teaching historical contextualization was used to develop a three-stage historical contextualization framework: (1) raising awareness of possible present-oriented perspectives by presenting a historical case that students find difficult to explain, (2) reconstructing a historical context for the particular case, and (3) interpreting the historical case again with students’ newly acquired historical context knowledge. This framework was used to develop a lesson unit on Cold War events. In contrast to the lesson unit of the fifth study, this lesson unit consisted of four lessons and contained a structure that varied from more basic instructions (e.g., teachers demonstrate historical contextualization) to more complex instructions (e.g., students perform historical contextualization on their own). The lesson unit on Cold War events was tested for its success in improving students’ ability to perform historical contextualization through a quasi-experimental pre-test–post-test design with an experimental and a control condition (N = 169). The mean students’ age was 15 years in both conditions. In contrast to the fifth study, this study measured students’ ability to perform historical contextualization with six open-ended questions instead of multiple-choice items.
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