Page 33 - Balancing between the present and the past

Specific information about which students perform HPT successfully is still lacking,
however. This is a great concern with regard to the tendency for classrooms and
schools to become increasingly diverse (Forsten, Grant, & Hollas, 2002; McCoy & Ketterlin-Geller, 2004; Subban, 2006; Tomlinson, 2002; Tomlinson & Kalbfleisch, 2 1998). Teachers should therefore know their students’ competency levels, such as for
HPT, to adapt their teaching and to reshape history curricula to fit it to students’ needs (Jonassen & Grabowski, 1993). However, one of the most important conclusions in the annual report of the Dutch Inspectorate of Education (2012) was that most teachers do have the basic skills to offer good teaching but are not able to provide teaching tailored to the different needs of students. The use of reliable and valid measurement instruments can help teachers and other educational professionals gain insight into student performance and can assist them in achieving the important ability of addressing the different needs of students.
2.2.3 Measuring the ability to perform historical perspective taking
Measuring historical reasoning competencies is a very difficult challenge (e.g., Haydn, 2011; Peck & Seixas, 2008; Reich, 2009; VanSledright, 2013). HPT can be measured through semi-structured interviews (e.g., Berti, Baldin, & Toneatti, 2009; Lee & Ashby, 2001; Shemilt, 1987) and think-aloud assignments (e.g., Van Boxtel & Van Drie, 2004; Wineburg, 2001; Wooden, 2008), but these methods are time- and cost- ineffective. Hartmann and Hasselhorn (2008) have recently developed an instrument using a hypothetical scenario with an item-rating format. Their study offers positive indicators for measuring HPT among a large and heterogeneous student population.
The scenario refers to the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930s. The central historical agent is a young man who is deciding which political party to vote for in the next election. In relation to the historical story, the authors formulated nine items, corresponding to three stages of HPT: the present-oriented perspective, the role of the historical agent, and the historical contextualization (Hartmann & Hasselhorn, 2008). The three present-oriented perspective items display contemporary views on the past, whereas the three items pertaining to the role of the historical agent refer to his personal situation: What is his family like? Is he a member of the elite? This category is marked by the authors as an intermediate category between the present-oriented perspective and the historical contextualization items. These latter items display historical contextualized thinking. The student’s assignment is to place himself or herself in the historical context of this agent and decide if Hannes is willing to vote for the Nazi Party.
Measuring historical contextualization
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