Learning Historical Thinking With Oral History Interviews: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Intervention Study of Oral History Interviews in History Lessons

Abstract

The present study examined the effectiveness of the oral history approach with respect to students' historical competence. A total of 35 ninth-grade classes (N = 900) in Germany were randomly assigned to one of four conditions-live, video, text, or a (nontreated) control group-in a pretest, posttest, and follow-up design. Comparing the three intervention groups with the control group, the intervention groups scored better on four of the five achievement tests. Comparing the live group with the video and text groups, students in the live condition were more convinced of their learning progress at both measurement points. However, they scored lower than the video/text group on two achievement measures and higher on one at the posttest.

"Why Are We Here?": Teaching of Phenomenon of Migration with Oral History

“…On the other hand, as stated in many previous studies [6,18,38], the contribution of oral history to the perception of change and continuity was also revealed in this study. Participating students had the opportunity to perceive and interpret the change caused by migration.…”

“…While a person who migrated to Tekirdağ said that, s/he was unhappy because his/her living standards were better in her hometown. The results on this section are given in table 6.…”

Viewpoints of Social Studies Teachers about Oral History Method

“…Participant teachers stated that oral history helps the students to gain historic thinking skills, such as using primary evidences, recognizing the evidences, interpreting historical data, perceiving chronology, change and continuity, having historic empathy. Numerous studies (von Heyking, 2017;Van Nieuwenhuyse, 2017;Ng-A-Fook & Smith, 2017;Bertram, Wagner & Trautwein, 2017;Çelik, Karadeniz & Cabul, 2018) in the literature explicitly state the contributions of oral history to historical thinking skills.…”

Historical experiences: A framework for encountering complex historical sources

“…Although history education should enable students and educators to handle these sources competently, we know little about the actual effects that engaging with historic sites and eyewitnesses of the past have on learners, besides some first hints on the particularity of these sources (Baron, 2013;Baron et al, 2019;Bertram et al, 2017;Savenije, 2016). Consequently, studies on the effectiveness of these immediate experiences with the complex sources on learning processes are needed.…”