Between fact and interpretation: Teachers' beliefs and practices in intepretational history teaching

Abstract

In the last two decades, Dutch history teachers have witnessed a curriculum renewal for upper secondary education towards more emphasis on interpretational history teaching. This teaching approach means that, rather than teaching history as a factual and undisputable narrative, teachers come to address multiple coexisting narratives, as well as disciplinary criteria by means of which the coexisting narratives can be evaluated and compared. The main purpose of this thesis, which was to explore student and experienced teachers’ epistemological objectives and practices of history education, what facilitates and constrains them in interpretational history teaching and what teachers’ practices look like when focusing on multiperspectivity. The findings reveal that teachers combine objectives of history that can cause epistemological tensions in the representation of historical knowledge. Moreover, student teachers wanted to feel certainty based on a sense of confidence in their own expertise before engaging students in the uncertainty inherent in interpretational history. We have referred to this phenomenon as the certainty paradox. Finally, not all historical topics were perceived as equally applicable for interpretational history teaching. Teachers particularly disagreed about the applicability of controversial historical issues. When teaching about controversial issues teachers showed normative balancing, considering how to transfer certain values (i.e. imposing your own ideas about what can and cannot be said or thought about a certain topic), while also allowing value communication (i.e. accounting for and discussing different values).