Page 75 - Balancing between the present and the past

Furthermore, our analysis of the verbal protocols of 36 students indicated that five
students viewed the past from a present-oriented perspective in that they did not
realize that people in the past did not have the same knowledge that we have today.
One student viewed Hannes as naïve and reasoned at the lowest level of the Lee
and Ashby (2001) taxonomy such that people of the past are regarded as ignorant
or stupid. In contrast, the other 30 students were aware of the consequences of their present-oriented perspective when explaining historical agents’ decisions, a finding
consistent with that of Berti et al. (2009). 3
Various studies and handbooks on teaching and learning history emphasize that presentism restricts historical understanding and that many students might view the past from a present-oriented perspective (e.g., Haydn, Stephen, Arthur, & Hunt, 2015; Lévesque, 2008; Seixas & Morton, 2013). However, the causes of presentism exhibited by students are typically not described. Based on our findings, we posit that historical knowledge plays a critical role in preventing presentism. Scholars, such as Endacott and Brooks (2013), Van Boxtel and Van Drie (2012), VanSledright (2001), and Wineburg (2001) have suggested a relationship between historical content knowledge and students’ ability to perform HPT, and our study seems to confirm this association. Specifically, we found a small but significant correlation (.19) between students’ prior chronological knowledge and their performance on the HPT instrument.
Furthermore, students’ protocols indicate that students who displayed good or excellent ability to perform HPT (mean HPT score ≥ 3.00) used more historical topic knowledge, particularly chronological and socio-political knowledge but also socio- cultural and socio-economic knowledge, in their reasoning than did students with mean HPT scores < 3.00. Compared to the lowest-performing students (Sophie and Bas), students who demonstrated good and excellent abilities to perform HPT also employed more types of knowledge in their reasoning. Making affective connections with a historical agent (e.g., if the students’ own fathers had money problems) could also facilitate individuals as they engaged in HPT (Endacott & Sturtz, 2014; Virja & Kouki, 2014), and our data seem to confirm this. However, five of the six students who displayed a present-oriented perspective also made affective connections. This suggests that making affective connections alone might not prevent presentism but that, to prevent such presentism, affective connections must include the role of the historical agent and the broader historical context.
Contextualizing historical agents’ actions
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