Toward a Developmentally Appropriate Understanding of Dual-Dimensional Perspective Taking Using Students' Writing About Historical Events

• In Event: 26.030 - An Innovative Social Justice Curriculum Through the Eyes of Students

Abstract

Davis, Yeager, and Foster (2001) identified historical empathy as a term possessing a “problematic and contested” definition. There is dizzying variability in researchers’ use of this term and the overarching concept of perspective taking (Bellino & Selman, 2012; Endacott & Brooks, 2013; Gelbach, 2004). In fact, both Barton & Levtsik’s perspective recognition (2004) and Lee & Ashby’s rational understanding (2001) refer to similar ideas. This definitional confusion derives from the concepts’ positioning at the intersection of three somewhat disparate literatures: first, social psychology, which attempts to understand the cognitive and emotional implications of putting oneself in another’s shoes; second, education practice research, which focuses on these concepts’ classroom use; and third, work on the civic and social justice impact of discourse centering on history or current events in children’s education.

Moreover, a debate continues over whether historical empathy is a cognitive, emotional, or dual-dimensional (i.e., integrating both cognitive and emotional dimensions) construct. While practitioners and education researchers focus more on children’s ability to differentiate cognitively between past and present—to grasp its ‘otherness’ from our time and avoid applying contemporary frames to historical figures and events—psychologists focus on the extent to which a child can put him or herself in another’s shoes. Recent literature (Endacott & Brooks, 2013) argues for historical empathy’s dual-dimensionality as having “the potential to promote both proximate goals (i.e. those that are related to immediate curricular objectives in the classroom) and ultimate goals (i.e. those that deal with understandings, skills, and dispositions that an individual might benefit from for a lifetime)” (p.44).

Why are perspectival acts, however defined, so important? They can induce some sense of emotion or empathy toward the stigmatized or marginalized (Batson et al., 1997); they can also help a student engaging in them to identify more with an other and—at the very least begin to—ascribe an other’s characteristics to the self (Davis et al., 1996). Beyond a classroom’s walls, taking perspectives can make it more likely for a student to commit positive social change on behalf of an other that has been subjected to some historical harm (Berndsen & McGarty, 2012). Yet one key question remains unanswered in the extant literature: What characterizes developmentally-appropriate historical perspective taking at different points in children’s education?

The present study uses fourth through eighth grade student essays collected from 2012-2014 in schools participating in the Catalyzing Comprehension through Discussion and Debate (CCDD) project to propose a new, developmentally-appropriate trajectory for dual-dimensional perspective taking and historical empathy. This research builds on the coding schemes developed by Jensen (2008) and Selman (CCDD, 2012), by proposing a hybrid coding system that is sensitive to developmental changes and then applying that hybrid coding system to student work, to provide tangible examples of developmentally-appropriate historical perspective taking. Essays demonstrate increasing sophistication across years using both rubrics. This work can inform the work of social psychologists, education theorists, and practitioners by providing them with a definition grounded in children's real abilities. Discussion will center on implications for classroom practice.

Author

• Timothy J Matthews, Harvard University