Designing historical empathy learning experiences: a pedagogical tool for history teachers

Abstract

This article explores the pedagogies that history teachers use to foster historical empathy, drawing from interviews with secondary school history teachers in Canada. The findings highlight that historical empathy is nurtured by teachers over time using a variety of different teaching approaches and activities, tasks and projects. The article begins by examining the pedagogical choices that teachers make when designing and implementing historical empathy lessons, categorised as implicit, thematic, student-centred, scaffolded and comparative approaches. Next, consideration is given to the types of learning experiences that teachers use to develop historical empathy, and some of the opportunities and challenges involved. These learning experiences include role plays and simulations, first- and third-person writing tasks, experiential learning and virtual reality, and collaborative and project-based learning. The perspectives shared by the teachers in this study contributed towards the development of a research-informed pedagogical tool to guide the future design of learning experiences that foster historical empathy, which may be applied by teachers across educational jurisdictions, and adapted for various grade levels.