Connecting past and present through case-comparison learning in history: views of teachers and students

ABSTRACT

History education frequently aims at developing active citizenship by using the past to orientate to the present and the future. A pedagogy for pursuing this aim is making connections between the past and the present by means of comparing cases of an enduring human issue. To examine the feasibility and desirability of this case-comparison teaching approach, students (n = 444) and teachers (n = 15) who participated in an implementation study conducted in the Netherlands were questioned about their experiences and views. Results show that both students and teachers felt that case-comparison in the context of an enduring human issue is feasible and not more complex than the usual history teaching in which topics are studied separately without explicitly making comparisons between past and present, even if some students thought that taking account of episodes from different historical periods concurrently required an extra learning effort. Both students and teachers believed that connecting past and present in history teaching enhances engagement and meaning making. They suggested a curriculum combining the case-comparison approach with the type of history teaching they were accustomed to. Mixed methods were used for data collection. Implications for further research on case-comparison learning in history are being discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• History teaching
• secondary school curriculum
• school subject relevance
• curriculum innovation
• case-comparison learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dick van Straaten

Dick van Straaten is a historian and history teacher educator at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS), Faculty of Education. He is also a PhD researcher at the Centre for Applied Research in Education (CARE) at this university. His main interest in teaching is historical consciousness, for which he has edited a textbook that is used in Dutch and Belgian universities. He is co-author of a handbook on history teaching for student teachers. His PhD research focuses on the implementation of pedagogical tools for making knowledge about the past meaningful to students.

Arie Wilschut

Arie Wilschut is a historian and professor of Social Studies Education at the Centre for Applied Research in Education (CARE) of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS). He has played a leading role in the reshaping of the Dutch history curriculum, which is now based on 10 associative eras supporting students’ orientation in historical time. His main research interests are consciousness of time in teaching history, on which he published the study Images of Time (2012), the relevance of history for students and the role of language in teaching and learning the social sciences.

Ron Oostdam

Ron Oostdam is Professor of Learning and Instruction and research director of the Centre for Applied Research in Education (CARE) of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS). He is also professor of Educational Studies at the Research Institute of Child Development and Education (RICDE) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). He is co-author of many articles and books and was manager of several international research projects. His research topics include differentiation in learning and instruction, motivation, cognitive processes for (language) learning, (early) literacy development, child care and development, parental involvement, test anxiety and learning potential. Many of his research projects include preschool, primary and secondary education.