Explaining the Third Reich: Swedish students' causal reasoning about the Nazi seizure of power in Germany

ABSTRACT

The topic of this study is how Swedish students aged 15–16 use causal reasoning in history when given a high-stakes task about explaining a historically significant event, the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany. The study is based on student texts from the Swedish national test in history. The student texts are mainly analysed with regards to how many, and what kinds of, causal factors are used by the students. The study finds that while most students are able to combine agents and situational factors in their explanations, the explanations show a recurring theme of combining a generic sense of economic crisis with Hitler and the German people as the important agents, to the detriment of other causes that could open up for different interpretations of why the Nazi regime came to power. To counteract this, the study suggests increased emphasis on some contextual factors in teaching practices.

KEYWORDS:

• History
• assessment
• subject knowledge
• secondary schools

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my colleagues at the department of individual and society at Malmö University for helping me with access to their archive, and Dr Henrik Åström Elmersjö at the department of history, Umeå University, for comments that greatly improved the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It should be noted that the Swedish textbook market is unregulated, without any textbooks prescribed by the state. A full coverage of available textbooks for this age group (13–16) would have to become a separate study. However, these examples represent two of the major Swedish textbook publishers (Liber and Gleerups, respectively).

2. This is due to the grading guidelines in the syllabus. For grade B, the syllabus states that ‘grade B means that the knowledge requirements for grade C and most of A are fulfilled’ (Lgr 11, p. 169). The same holds for the closeness of C and D grades. The E and F grades are distinct in the sense that E is a passing grade, while F is a failed grade.

3. Another consideration affecting the exact number of answers was to make the selection comparable to a similar study the author participated in (Samuelsson & Wendell, 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joakim Wendell

Joakim Wendell is PhD candidate in history at the department of political, historical, religious and cultural studies, Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden. His research interests centre on assessment and on causal reasoning in teaching and learning history.