Page 20 - Balancing between the present and the past

Chapter 1
1.2.3 A framework for teaching historical contextualization
In their review of history education research, VanSledright and Limón (2006) outlined that in an average history classroom, the teacher does most of the talking. Lecturing and story-telling often dominate the classroom. Recent research seems to confirm this finding (e.g., Saye & Social Studies Inquiry Research Collaborative, 2013; VanSledright, 2011). In such history classrooms, historical reasoning might not be promoted, since reasoning requires active participation and input from the students (Van Boxtel & Van Drie, 2017). Based on this view, and with regard to the knowledge that students learn most when actively engaged in learning tasks (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000), we view teaching historical contextualization as an interactive process in which both students and teachers participate and engage in dialog.
Based on a review of the literature on historical contextualization, teaching historical contextualization in this thesis is conceptualized as four interrelated components: (1) reconstructing a historical context, (2) raising awareness of present-oriented perspectives, (3) enhancing historical empathy, and (4) creating opportunities for students to practice historical contextualization to enable historical reasoning. All components should occur in interactions between teachers and students. The components are presented in Figure 1.
The first component is reconstructing the historical context. To perform historical contextualization successfully, the historical context of a phenomenon must be reconstructed including knowledge of chronological, spatial, socio-political, socio- economic, and socio-cultural frames of reference (De Keyser & Vandepitte, 1998). A frame of reference is a knowledge base for interpreting and dating historical phenomena (Lee & Howson, 2009). Without background knowledge of historical phenomena, students cannot grasp the “sense of a period,” as Dawson (2009) noted. Teachers can explore and explain different frames of reference with students and teach them to use these frames to reconstruct a historical context. It is important to consider all frames when examining historical phenomena and agents’ actions. The chronological frame includes knowledge of time and period and chronological knowledge of significant events and developments. Students must situate phenomena and historical agents’ actions in time to be able to explain, compare, or evaluate these phenomena and acts (Van Boxtel & Van Drie, 2012). The spatial frame focuses on knowledge of (geographical) locations and scale. For example, when students lack spatial context knowledge and think that Suriname is a country in
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