Page 84 - Balancing between the present and the past

Chapter 4
To date, however, there are no validated and reliable observation instruments that evaluate secondary-school history teaching. This is unfortunate, especially because, as noted by Achinstein and Fogo (2015), Bain and Mirel (2006), and Grant and Gradwell (2009), current teacher education and professional development programs may not meet history teachers’ needs so that they can achieve the aims set by history curricula. Observation instruments that evaluate history teachers’ subject-specific strategies could identify history teachers’ specific needs and, thus, further improve teacher education and professional development programs for history teachers.
Van Hover, Hicks, and Cotton (2012) attempted to construct a validated observation instrument to evaluate secondary-school history teaching. Their Protocol for Assessing the Teaching of History (PATH) is promising, but information about the measure’s reliability is lacking. In contrast to PATH, the observation instrument that we developed focuses on a single but highly important history teacher competency; promoting students’ ability to perform historical contextualization. Historical contextualization is considered an important component of historical thinking and reasoning and is incorporated into history curricula worldwide (Lévesque, 2008; Seixas & Morton, 2013; Van Drie & Van Boxtel, 2008). In previous research, we examined how students performed on a historical contextualization task and found that secondary-school students of different ages experience difficulties in performing historical contextualization tasks (Huijgen, Van Boxtel, Van de Grift, & Holthuis, 2014). Therefore, we must gain greater insight into how history teachers promote students’ ability to perform historical contextualization in classrooms. The purpose of the present study is, therefore, to construct a reliable high-inference observation instrument and scoring design to assess history teachers’ competency in promoting historical contextualization in classrooms. In this study, we first present the theoretical framework and our research questions. Then, we present our methodology and results. Finally, we discuss our findings and present the practical implications of the results and directions for future research.
4.2 Theoretical framework
4.2.1 Teaching historical reasoning competencies
Scholars and other educational professionals widely agree that secondary-school history education should involve more than the simple learning of facts (e.g.,
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