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ABSTRACT
This article draws on research into young people’s knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust conducted by the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education (CfHE). Two questions are addressed: “How can we theorize and measure development and progression in young people’s historical knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust?” and “How can empirical social scientific research methods be used to help us describe young people’s knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust?” This article reviews methodologies developed by the CfHE and exemplifies a research tool and two complementary approaches to analysis, focused on young people’s descriptions of the Holocaust.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Arthur Chapman is Senior Lecturer in History Education at the UCL Institute of Education. He works in initial education and supervises masters and doctoral students. Arthur is Associate Editor of the London Review of Education and The International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research, a member of the editorial boards of the International Review of History Education and the Curriculum Journal, and was co-editor of Teaching History in 2007–2013. He was an editor of Constructing History, 11–19 (Sage, 2009) and of Joined Up History (Information Age, 2015). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Rebecca Hale is a Research Associate at the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education. She works within the Centre’s research team, and is one of the lead authors of What Do Students Know and Understand about the Holocaust? Evidence from English Secondary Schools (UCL Institute of Education, 2016). She is leading a study into the impact of the Centre’s professional development programs for teachers and evaluates the Centre’s Beacon School program.
Notes
1. Foster et al., What Do Students Know.
2. Donovan and Bransford, “Introduction,” 1–2.
3. BBC, GCSE Bitesize, History.
4. Ibid.
5. The discussion in this section depends upon, inter alia, Lee, “Putting Principles into Practice”; Lévesque, Thinking Historically; Seixas, “A Model of Historical Thinking”; and van Drie and van Boxtel, “Historical Reasoning.”
6. Walsh, “Colligatory Concepts in History”; and Kuukkanen, Postnarrativist Philosophy.
7. We borrow the metaphor of understanding history at different resolutions and of “zooming” in and out to do so from Rogers, “Frameworks for Big History.”
8. Shaw, What Is Genocide?
9. Pettigrew et al., Teaching about the Holocaust, 77.
10. Foster et al., What Do Students Know, 8.
11. Tamir, “Justifying the Selection,” 563.
12. Bischoping, “Method and Meaning,” 455.
13. Carrington and Short, “Holocaust Education,” 274–5.
14. Foster et al., What Do Students Know, 192–4.
15. Ibid., 190.
16. Ivanova, “Ukrainian High School Students’ Understanding.”
17. Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, “Mixed Methods Research,” 20.
18. Jedwab, “Measuring Holocaust Knowledge,” 277.
19. Foster et al., What Do Students Know, 8.
20. Jedwab, “Measuring Holocaust Knowledge,” 277.
21. Foster et al., What Do Students Know, 161–4.
22. Bischoping, “Method and Meaning,” 455.
23. Johnson et al., “Toward a Definition,” 123.
24. Onwuegbuzie and Leech, “Enhancing the Interpretation,” 771.
25. Morgan, “Practical Strategies.”
26. Kelle, “Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods.”
27. Morgan, “Paradigms Lost”; Newman et al., “A Typology of Research Purposes.”
28. Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, “Mixed Methods Research.”
29. Foster et al., What Do Students Know, 23–34.
30. Ibid., 31–4.
31. Blaikie, Approaches to Social Enquiry.
32. Strauss and Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research.
33. Foster et al., What Do Students Know, 37–69.
34. Ibid., 29.
35. Ibid., 23–34.
36. Ibid., 40.
37. Ibid., 36–69, 231, and 249–50.
38. Ibid., 44 and 249–50.
39. Ibid., 62.
40. Ibid., 42–3.
41. Gibbs, Qualitative Data Analysis.
42. Coffin et al., Exploring English Grammar; and Halliday and Matthiessen, Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar.
43. Halliday and Matthiessen, Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar, 83.
44. Foster et al., What Do Students Know, 65–6; Pettigrew et al., Teaching about the Holocaust, 65–70; and Chapman et al., Evaluation, 89–93.
45. We adopt the terms “Actors” and “Acted-upon” here, rather than more conventional grammatical terms (such as “patient” or “goal”) because of some unwelcome connotations that conventional terms might have in the context of our subject matter. The “Acted-upon” function is referred to as “semantic object” to indicate that it is not identical in meaning to the grammatical category “direct object.”
46. “Nominalisation is a type of grammatical metaphor. In formal written English there is a tendency to represent events, qualities of objects and events, and logical connections, not in their most ‘natural’ or congruent forms as verbs but as nouns. This is particularly the case in academic, technical, and specialized uses of English. The use of nominalisation increases dramatically in topics that are based on abstract concepts, properties, and theories. Arguably, without the ability to nominalize, it would be difficult to develop many scientific notions (e.g. evaporation, radiation, etc.).” Coffin et al., Exploring English Grammar, 422–3.
47. Coffin et al., Exploring English Grammar, 308–9.
48. Syntax and orthography have been corrected in all respondent descriptions throughout this article to enhance readability and comprehension.
49. We coded items like “during World War 2” as referencing the “situation” rather than time because these items are ambiguous and could mean (a) “between 1939 and 1945” or (b) “when there was a war taking place.” Foster et al. coded such terms as referencing time (What Do Students Know, 54).
50. Lee, “Putting Principles into Practice”; and Lee and Shemilt, “Is Any Explanation Better.”
51. Carretero and Lee, “Learning Historical Concepts,” 590.
52. Woodcock, “Does the Linguistic Release the Conceptual?”