Dealing With Different Pasts: The Design-Based Refinement a High School Unit to Improve Metahistorical Conceptions

• In Event: Learning Sciences Perspectives on Framing, Affect, and Epistemologies

Abstract

With increasing diversity, the need to understand multiple accounts of past events intensifies. To grapple with multiple historical accounts without surrendering to the idea that everyone is entitled to their own view, students need more sophisticated ideas about historical knowledge. We applied design-based research methods as part of a three-year effort to develop an 11th grade social studies unit targeting students’ conceptions about why historical accounts differ. While students in the first implementation showed no significant change in metahistorical conceptions, students who participated in a revised version of the unit increased both the strength of their appreciation that history is a form of evidence-based reasoning and their understanding that there can be more than one defensible account of an event.

Authors

• Kevin O'Neill, Simon Fraser University

• Ozlem Sensoy, Simon Fraser University

• Sheryl Guloy, Simon Fraser University

• Fiona M. MacKellar, The University of British Columbia