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      Dutch students’ understanding of the interpretative nature of textbooks when comparing two texts about a significant event in the development of democracy

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          Abstract

          In history education, the deconstruction of narratives is an important skill for students. The skill teaches them to look critically at the offered texts. In this study, we investigated the extent to which students are able to critically analyse the narratives in their history textbooks. To answer this question, we asked 106 students in pre-university education (16–17 years of age) to read and compare two texts – from two different textbooks – about a turning point in the development of the Dutch state and democracy: the introduction of universal suffrage for men and women in 1917–19. One group of students (N=10) worked on the assignment while thinking aloud. We found that most students recognized the author’s voice in the selection of persons and dates and in the attention paid to a particular topic, but that they hardly mentioned recognizing the voice in aspects such as the choice of words or headings. The students who analysed and compared the texts while thinking aloud all indicated after the assignment that they understood that these texts are different interpretations of the same historical development.

          Most cited references42

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          Historical problem solving: A study of the cognitive processes used in the evaluation of documentary and pictorial evidence.

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            The big six historical thinking concepts

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              Historical thinking and other unnatural acts: Charting the future of teaching the past

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                herj
                herj
                History Education Research Journal
                HERJ
                UCL Press (UK )
                2631-9713
                20 October 2020
                : 17
                : 2
                : 214-228
                Affiliations
                [1]Drachtster Lyceum and University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
                [2]University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
                [3]University of Groningen, The Netherlands
                Author notes
                Corresponding author: Email: m.a.houwen@ 123456uva.nl
                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1240-8129
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5119-121X
                Article
                10.14324/HERJ.17.2.06
                95ff813f-8699-4124-8522-d1692117a3ec
                Copyright © 2020 Houwen, Van Boxtel and Holthuis

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 16 September 2019
                : 15 June 2020
                Page count
                References: 24, Pages: 16

                Educational research & Statistics,General education,History
                upper secondary education,textbooks,historical thinking,historical narratives,historical interpretation

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