“Taipei Will Sink!” Students Ideas About the Past, Present, and Future

• In Event: Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: International Perspectives on History Curricula and Textbooks

Abstract

The paper aims to explore Taiwanese students’ ideas about the past, present and future, with the focus on how the past they have learned is related to their understandings of the present and the future. The research was carried out through a written task to investigate the ideas of a sample of 16-year-old students from two senior high schools in Taiwan. The results showed that more than half of the students could employ their knowledge of the past to make sense of the present. However, the majority of the students were not able to use their historical knowledge to infer future possibilities, including the ones who demonstrated understanding of the connection between the past and the present.

Author

• Yi-Mei Hsiao, National Academy for Educational Research