Developing an Historical Empathy Pathway with New Zealand Secondary School Students. (1st November 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Davison, Martyn
• Is Part Of: International journal of historical learning, teaching and research. Volume 12:Number 2(2014)
• Page Start: 5
• Page End: 21
• Publication Date: 2014-11-01
• Subjects: History -- Study and teaching; History -- Research; Periodicals; 907
• DOI: 10.18546/HERJ.12.2.02
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1472-9474

Abstract

This article seeks to understand how students interpret historical empathy, a concept frequently thought of as vicariously walking in the shoes of someone from the past. It does this by drawing upon insights from secondary school students, who took part in an instructional intervention that involved me teaching historical empathy to two social studies classes. It also draws on my reading of the literature, especially Gaddis (2002). Eliciting the students' interpretations from interviews and visual materials and by reflecting on my reading, I identified a series of elements that I categorized as belonging to either the affective or cognitive dimensions of historical empathy. Pulling together these elements and Gaddis' idea that histrocial empathy is potentially acquired through phases, I developed an historical empathy pathway. This pathway proposes a guiding sequence of affective and cognitive elements that could inform teaching and learning.