Fostering Secondary Students' Historical Thinking: A Design Study in Flemish History Education

Marjolein Wilke; Fien Depaepe; Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse

doi:10.1007/s41686-023-00074-8

Fostering Secondary Students' Historical Thinking: A Design Study in Flemish History Education

J Form Des Learn. 2023 Feb 27:1-21. doi: 10.1007/s41686-023-00074-8. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Marjolein Wilke¹, Fien Depaepe^{2

3}, Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse¹

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Arts, KU Leuven, Blijde Inkomststraat 21-Bus 3301, 3000 Louvain, Belgium.
² Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Center for Instructional Psychology and Technology, KU Leuven, Dekenstraat 2-Bus 3773, 3000 Louvain, Belgium.
³ ITEC, Imec Research Group at KU Leuven, Imec, Louvain, Belgium.

Abstract

A recent curriculum reform in Flanders (Belgium) has introduced historical thinking as a central goal for history education. Historical thinking aims to introduce students to the methods of historians and disciplinary ways of thinking. It is a complex act, requiring the application of substantive and second-order knowledge, and is difficult to foster among students. International (intervention) research has provided several guidelines for the design of instructional practices that are effective in promoting specific aspects of students' historical thinking. However, these studies do not approach historical thinking in a holistic manner, are often vague about how general design principles were adapted to history education, and rarely report on whether the designed curricula were considered relevant and useful by teachers. Taking into account the many difficulties that teachers encounter in designing practices aimed at historical thinking, this design research aims to gain more insight into the design of instructional practices that are both effective in fostering historical thinking in a holistic manner and that are considered socially valid by teachers. The designed artifact is a 12- to 14-h lesson series on the theme "decolonization after 1945," for students in the 12th grade. It applies the model of cognitive apprenticeship's (Collins et al., 1991) general design principles to the specific context of history and approaches historical thinking in a holistic manner. The initial lesson series was evaluated and revised in two rounds based on a pilot study, an expert review and an intervention study.

Keywords: Cognitive apprenticeship; Design-based research; Historical thinking; History education; Secondary education.

© Association for Educational Communications & Technology 2023, Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.