"It is Really Hard Being in Their Shoes": Developing Historical Empathy in Secondary School Students

Abstract

Historical empathy is highly valued by many history education researchers as a means of cultivating tolerance and critical thinking. The potential of historical empathy however, to be widely taught in classrooms, may not be fully realised because there is little agreement regarding its meaning and teaching. This thesis, through a qualitative comparative case study, explores students' development of historical empathy, how the concept might be taught and whether its meaning can be clarified. The thesis begins by describing my interest in historical empathy, before identifying the concept's affective and cognitive dimensions found within the literature. It then outlines how as a teacher-researcher I devised an intervention which entailed teaching one class (Class A/C) the affective dimension first, followed by the cognitive dimension, and teaching another class (Class C/A) the reverse: that is the cognitive dimension first, followed by the affective. Within this context I set out to explore three research questions. The first investigated, through interviews and visual material, how students interpret historical empathy. Findings showed that their interpretations emphasised the difficulty of empathising historically and they identified elements such as open-mindedness and evidence. Building on this, I developed a typology and pathway to help establish a common understanding of historical empathy. The second explored the development of historical empathy in two students, Lucy (Class A/C) and Claire (Class C/A), using their workbooks, essays and assessment task responses. Typologies, pathways and spider-web diagrams were used to plot their progression, while their essays exemplified what the concept of sophisticated historical empathy looked like. The third investigated the sequencing of the affective and cognitive dimensions of historical empathy. Results drawn from multiple data sources showed that student enjoyment and interest were strongest when the affective dimension was taught first, followed by the cognitive. The thesis has made a useful contribution to my practice and the wider history community. It has done this by clearly interpreting the meaning of historical empathy, identifying students' growth in developing the concept through the use of progression strategies and by exploring how the sequence in which historical empathy's affective and cognitive dimensions are taught can influence learning.