| Towards Excellent Historical Reasoning: The Competency of Historical Perspective Taking (HPT) Authors: Tim Huijgen, Carla van Boxtel, Wim van de Grift & Paul Holthuis Presenting author: Tim Huijgen The Netherlands HEIRNET 2014

| Outline presentation ›PhD research project ›Theoretical framework ›Research questions ›Method ›Results ›Discussion 2

| PhD research project 2012 – 2018 ›How do history teachers stimulate students’ ability to perform HPT? ›How can we help students to perform HPT? 1.Performing HPT: measuring students’ ability to perform HPT 2.Performing HPT: students’ knowledge and strategies to perform HPT (explorative) 3.Stimulating HPT: development and validation of an observational protocol regarding teacher ability to stimulate HPT 4.Stimulating HPT: differences regarding teacher ability to stimulate HPT 5.Stimulating HPT: development of class material with a view to stimulating HPT (a quasi- experimental study) 3

| Theoretical framework (1) ›In order to be able to explain and evaluate the past, students must learn to consistently take into account that the past differs from the present. ›HPT is considered as a very important competency in many history curricula of different countries 4

| Theoretical framework (2) ›HPT means attempting to see through the eyes of people who lived in other times and circumstances (Seixas & Morton, 2013) ›HTP is the application of the knowledge that historical agents had particular perspectives on their world that affected their actions (Lee & Ashby, 2001) ›However, many students suffer from presentism and therefore do not outline the historical context. ›Presentism is the bias by which people assume that the same goals, intentions, attitudes, and beliefs existed in the past as they exist today (Barton & Levstik, 2004). 5

| Theoretical framework (3) ›In order to take a historical perspective: 1.Students should use a chronological, a spatial and a social cultural frame of reference 2.Students must be able to display historical empathy 3.Students must avoid presentism 6

| Research questions 1.Which strategies and knowledge do students use in order to successfully take a historical perspective? 2.Which differences can be found between the strategies used by students classified as weak, as average and those classified as excellent when asked to take a historical perspective? 7

| Method ›Seven teachers each selected a weak, an average and an excellent student (n = 21) ›HTP assignment (developed and validated by Hartmann and Hasselhorn, 2008) ›The mean category scores (pop, roa and cont) were calculated for each of the students ›The data protocols were analyzed by using the coding software programme Multiple Episode Protocol Analysis (Erkens, 2003) ›The coding categories were formulated 8

| Coding categories 9

| Results (1) 10

| Results (2) ›Students used: 1.Chronological historical knowledge (including thinking about continuity and change); social-economic historical knowledge; and social-political historical knowledge 2.Historical empathy  students made personal connections with the historical agent ›Excellent classified students (as compared to weak classified students): 1.Used specification of ignorance 2.Asked more questions about the source 3.Made more references to the source 4.Combined chronological knowledge with social-economic and social political knowledge 11

| Results (3) 12

| Discussion Limitations: 1.Small number of participants (explorative) 2.Subjective classification Practical implications: 1.Combining different frames of references 2.Specifying their lack of knowledge Further research: 1.Students who did not display a lot of chronological and social knowledge, tried to take a historical perspective by making personal connections with the historical agent in order to understand the historical agent’s decisions 2.The relation between generic task strategies and domain-specific strategies 13

| Contact or full paper? › 14