Agency and Structure in Swedish Students' Historical Reasoning

• In Event: 16.024 - International Research on Teaching and Learning History: Findings From Belgium, Israel, Sweden, and the United States

Abstract

Historical reasoning is the organizing of information about the past in order to describe, compare, and/or explain historical phenomena. In this study I investigated Swedish students’ ability to reason historically in terms of agent and structure in an educational context. What does it mean to reason historically in this specific way? What does it take for students to develop this ability? Two main materials were used: student-produced texts in which they reasoned historically in terms of agent and structure, and observation of lessons that aimed to help students develop this ability.

In the analysis of the texts, I looked for qualitative similarities and differences in how students reasoned, aiming at a pedagogically meaningful categorization that allows critical aspects of the ability to be identified and that elucidates the ability as such. Critical aspects are understood as difference between qualitatively different ways of reasoning, demonstrating features important for the development of the ability (Marton, Runesson & Tsui, 2004). In an expert-novice study (Wineburg 1991, 1998) the difference in experts’ and novices’ performances sheds light on the ability studied. In this study I was interested in the ability as it appeared in an educational setting, and students’ development of the ability. Therefore I looked for differences among texts written by students, the novices. In the process of analysis, different ways of reading and understanding the texts were tried; some were rejected, while others showed explanatory value and contributed to the final categorization (Marton & Booth, 1997).

Data showed that the difference between a temporal description of chains of events on one hand, and reasoning about agents and structures on the other, was crucial. The students must discern what reasoning in terms of agent and structure is: a synchronous discussion of the relative importance of structural factors and factors concerning agents in a historical situation. Students must also understand that structures can be of different kinds, as can agents; that relevant factors must be selected; that connections between the factors should be made explicit; that these factors may be developed by further explanation, by an assessment of their relative significance, by making comparisons, or by making causal connections. The results also indicated that the objects of learning tend to change when enacted in the classroom: from the ability to reason historically towards the historical content, and towards temporal accounts of chains of action. A relationship is seen between the teaching in the different classes and how the students reason. Counterfactual reasoning is found to be useful in making it possible for the students to develop their understanding of structures, and as a tool for formative assessment.

Author

• Anna-Lena Lilliestam, Göteborgs University