Identifying aspects of temporal orientation in students' moral reflections

• The concept of historical consciousness has been the epicentre of history didactics in continental and northern Europe since the 1980s. However the concept is contested and, by some, regarded as vague or meta-physical. A main objection has been that it is not obvious how a historical consciousness can be definitively identified, analysed or categorized.In this paper historical consciousness is the theoretical frame when we present a matrix for analysing students’ expressions of temporal orientation by studying their reasoning on inter-relations between intrepretations of the past, understandings of the present and perspectives on a possible future. The matrix has been constructed by inter-linking two prominent theoretical models to analyse forms of historical consciousness, including Rüsen’s types of narratives and Chinnery’s strands of historical consciousness.Through the matrix, we analyse a selection of Finnish and Swedish lower secondary school students’ answers to a questionnaire about historical and moral reflections after reading an excerpt from Christopher Browning’s book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (orig. 1992). The students have answered and discussed open-ended questions regarding if and how the narrative in the excerpt has a relevant message for themselves and for people today and also if a similar situation could appear in Europe today or in the future. The matrix provides tools for categorizing the students’ answers. The theoretical basis of the matrix and preliminary results are discussed in the paper.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi -- Historia (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology -- History (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Didaktik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Didactics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

History Education

Historia med didaktisk inriktning

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)