Lukiolaiset historian lähteiden tulkitsijoina

Authors

• Najat Oukarim-Soivio Helsingin yliopisto
• Marko van den Berg Helsingin yliopisto

Keywords:

Historical literacy, Disciplinary thinking, History core curriculum, assessment, working methods in history, didactics of history

Abstract

The present article is based on data where the content focus is on history teaching and learning and students’ critical sourcing skills. The data were collected from several upper secondary schools in 2017. The students and their teachers were asked among other things what kind of what kind of methods they used to work during history lessons. The students were given different sources related to the meeting between Elvis Presley and President Richard Nixon in 1970. The students were asked to give a justified answer to the question why Elvis wanted to meet Nixon, and the answer had to be based on the different sources provided. The research questions of this article are as follows: 1) do students’ skills in interpreting different sources and producing a justified answer based on sources vary between gender, students’ home language, school grades and students' intentions to take the history exam in the matriculation examination, 2) were there differences in students’ performance  between schools and learning groups and 3) to what extent are different working methods (such as sourcing, interpenetrating different sources and multiperspectivity) used during history lessons. At the end of this article, we discuss whether there is a connection between students’ historical literacy, their ability to produce justified answers based on the sources and working methods used during history classes. We also bring up the question of whether it is even possible to make students’ historical literacy skills visible and help teachers to assess students' disciplinary thinking with materials of this kind. The results showed that there were statistically significant differences between schools with regard to how the students performed. There were also differences on students’ performance based on gender and home language. The study also found that students and their teachers evaluated the working methods that were used during history classes very differently.