Adopting a Historical Perspective Regarding Sensitive Topics in History

• In Event: 34.079 - Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: 34.079-6 - Building Students' Historical Thinking and Reasoning Skills

Abstract

When a historical topic is sensitive, such as the Second World War, and pupils identify with particular historical figures, pupils may have difficulty to adopt the historical perspective of counter figures. This study examined the correlation between pupils’ identification with a particular historical actor in a sensitive history on their adoption of the historical perspective regarding the actions of a counter actor. Third year secondary school pupils (n=250) watched a film fragment and completed a historical perspective taking task. Preliminary results suggest that pupils are willing and sometimes rather capable of historically understanding actions of historical figures that they condemn morally from their present perspective. The preliminary analysis did not show correlations between pupils’ identification and their historical perspective taking.

Author

• Geerte Maria Savenije, University of Amsterdam