Toward Historical Perspective Taking: Students’ Reasoning When Contextualizing the Actions of People in the Past

Huijgen, Tim; Boxtel, Carla van; Grift, Wim van de; Holthuis, Paul

doi:10.1080/00933104.2016.1208597

Cited by 57 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 54 publications

(82 reference statements)

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“…Multiperspectivity "in the past" refers to parallel or synchronic contemporaneous subjects' perspectives, and its educational function is typically to teach students that different historical actors may have had different coexisting perspectives on a certain object based on different experiences, beliefs, and ideologies. Several authors have referred to this function in terms of "historical perspective taking," which is described as understanding the views of people in the past and explaining their beliefs and norms (Endacott & Sturtz, 2014;Huijgen, Van Boxtel, Van de Grift, & Holthuis, 2017). In this article, we conceptualize historical perspective taking as a cognitive process in which students try to reconstruct an adequate (historical) context to understand and make sense of the subject acting in that specific social and cultural context.…”

Section: A Temporal Model Of Multiperspectivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Where Does Teaching Multiperspectivity in History Education Begin and End? An Analysis of the Uses of Temporality

Wansink

Akkerman

Zuiker

et al. 2018

Theory & Research in Social Education

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This study reports five Dutch expert history teachers' approaches to multiperspectivity in lessons on three topics varying in moral sensitivity (i.e., the Dutch Revolt, Slavery, and the Holocaust) and their underlying considerations for addressing subjects' perspectives in different temporal layers. The lessons were observed and videorecorded, and the teachers were interviewed. Lessons were analyzed using a theoretical framework in which three different temporal layers of perspectives were distinguished, each with its own educational function. Teachers addressed multiple temporal layers and functions of multiperspectivity in almost all of their lessons. However, teachers' focus on temporal layers and function differed between lessons. Four categories of considerations for or against introducing specific subjects' perspectives were found: functional, moral, pedagogical, and practical. Moreover, teachers engaged in "normative balancing," meaning that not all perspectives were perceived as equally valid or politically desirable, showing where multiperspectivity ends.

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Section: A Temporal Model Of Multiperspectivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Where Does Teaching Multiperspectivity in History Education Begin and End? An Analysis of the Uses of Temporality

Wansink

Akkerman

Zuiker

et al. 2018

Theory & Research in Social Education

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“…Students contextualise the actions of historical figures by explaining and evaluating their actions and situating them in particular temporal, spatial, and social contexts. In addition, they need to be aware of their own positionality and the distinction between the past and the present (van Drie and van Boxtel 2008;Seixas and Morton 2013;Huijgen et al 2016). The skill of historical empathy is considered to constitute an important element in the development of students' historical understanding.…”

Section: Historical Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical empathy in a museum: uniting contextualisation and emotional engagement

Savenije

Bruijn

2017

International Journal of Heritage Studies

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Museums, memorial centres and other heritage institutions use various strategies to evoke an emotional response that serves to elicit empathy with the historical events and actors that are portrayed in exhibitions. To increase historical understanding, however, both emotional engagement with and contextual understanding of these historical figures are needed. Using the concept of historical empathy, this paper examines the continuous interplay between cognitive and affective dimensions of history learning in museums. We conducted a case study at Museon in The Hague, the Netherlands. We studied a learning session on children living through the Second World War, the museum's strategies employed in the exhibition, the entrance narratives of secondary school students participating in the session and their engagement with the exhibition and with the educational activities. While most of the students did not feel related to WWII prior to their museum visit, the museum managed to engage many of them with personal stories and artefacts and by offering multiple and new perspectives. Our findings underscore the interplay between cognitive and affective dimensions of historical empathy and show that museums can serve as powerful contexts for developing this skill among school students.

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“…This could be seen as an in-between position between presentist judgements and contextualized judgements, because it elicits bringing in one's own perspective as well as context: 'if I were him in that situation, I would …'. This model, which has also been applied by Huijgen et al (2014Huijgen et al ( , 2017, has been used as one of the quantitative measures in the empirical study presented below.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The discussion about historical empathy in history education has been going on since the 1980s (Boddington, 1980;Stockley, 1983; Knight, 1989) and continues (Endacott and Brooks, 2013;Huijgen et al, 2017;Rantala et al, 2016;Virta and Kouki, 2014) without consensus being reached about the exact meaning of the concept or its correct application in history teaching. It is striking that the educational debate hardly refers to the debate about historical explanation in historical theory, nor to social psychology about empathy and perspective taking, with the notable exception of Nilsen (2016), who explicitly connects historical understanding to social psychology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

'One has to take leave as much as possible of one's own standards and values': Improving and measuring historical empathy and perspective reconstruction

Wilschut¹,

Schiphorst²

2019

History Education Research Journal

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Historical empathy or perspective taking has been a bone of contention in studies on history teaching, and the concept remains ill-defined. This may have been caused by a lack of theoretical reflection, as well as by the application of diverse research methods: a more cognitive or 'rational' explanation of the concept has often been substantiated by quantitative methods, while the more affective dimension has regularly been explored by qualitative methods. In this contribution, we trace some theoretical backgrounds of 'empathy' in historical theory as well as social psychology. Then we present a mixed-methods study employing a quantitative standardized measure developed in previous research in Germany and the Netherlands, as well as qualitative measurements. Results suggest that while, on the one hand, the standardized measure proved to be unreliable, both quantitative and qualitative methods can shed more light on what is going on when students try to take the point of view of historical agents. Based on theory, as well as our explorations, our conclusion is that empathy or perspective taking should be seen as a cognitive operation. We propose to see the reconstruction of historical perspectives as a specific element of historical explanation, not as a separate concept of 'historical empathy' or 'historical perspective taking'.

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Toward Historical Perspective Taking: Students’ Reasoning When Contextualizing the Actions of People in the Past

Cited by 57 publications

References 54 publications

Where Does Teaching Multiperspectivity in History Education Begin and End? An Analysis of the Uses of Temporality

Where Does Teaching Multiperspectivity in History Education Begin and End? An Analysis of the Uses of Temporality

Historical empathy in a museum: uniting contextualisation and emotional engagement

'One has to take leave as much as possible of one's own standards and values': Improving and measuring historical empathy and perspective reconstruction

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