Learning Historical Thinking with Eyewitnesses:
Bringing eyewitnesses into history lessons is recommended in every education curriculum of every state in Germany and in almost every didactic manual. At the same time discussion arose about risks of working with eyewitnesses, for example the special persuasive power of eyewitnesses, which could harm the promotion of historical thinking competences. In multiple studies we examine the effectiveness of eyewitnesses in history lessons. The PhD project "Chances and Risks of Eyewitness Questioning" is the starting point for three further projects. One currently ongoing dissertation project is developing a standardized instrument to detect "The Special Learning Experience with Eyewitnesses". This instrument as well as the video interviews of the "Generation 1975" will be used in the DFG eyewitnesses study, a randomized and controlled field study in which trained teachers will teach the intervention with live and video eyewitnesses.
Chances and Risks of Eyewitness in History Lessons
The PhD study "Chances and Risks of Eyewitness Questioning. A Randomized Intervention Study in History Lessons" analysed what the effect on educational success is if one group is working with live-eyewitnesses compared to the other group working with a transcript. In 35 classes - ten classes for each condition (live, video, text) and five control classes - the effectiveness in regards to the promotion of historical competences and the interest in the lesson was analysed. With regard to the motivational outcomes the live group shows clear advantages in comparison with the video group or text group. However the live group had some disatvantages in the competence promotion compared to the other groups.
In a more in depth analysis - following the Aptitude-Treatment-Interaction-Paradigma (ATI) – the different effect of the eyewitnesses intervention for learners with different learning conditions was investigated. The study examines how the influence of the different eyewitnesses intervention formats differs for students with differing self-worth and differing social self-concept according to their insight into the epistemological principles of history. The results show that students with high self-worth and social self-concept profit the same from the live condition as well as from the video or text condition. Students with a lower self-worth and social self-concept seem to profit more from the video or text condition.
The data set of the eyewitness study was combined with two other data sets in a secondary data analysis by Benjamin Fauth and colleagues in a study to analyse lesson quality. The central result: the variable "lesson quality" - understood as the deep structure of the lesson: cognitive activation, classroom leadership and support - depends less, as persumed in research, public and education policy, on the teacher and their offer of support and their competences. Instead it mostly depends on the cooperation between the teacher and the learner within the respective class.
Contact person: Christiane Bertram
Publications (selection):
Bertram, C., Wagner, W. & Trautwein, U. (2017). Learning historical thinking with oral history interviews. A cluster randomized controlled intervention study of oral history interviews in history lessons. American Educatioinal Research Journal. First published date: February-01-2017. doi:10.3102/0002831217694833
Bertram, C. (2017). Zeitzeugen im Geschichtsunterricht. Chance oder Risiko für historisches Lernen? Eine randomisierte Interventionsstudie (Reihe Geschichtsunterricht erforschen). Schwalbach/Ts.: Wochenschau-Verlag
Zachrich, L., Wagner, W., Bertram, C., Trautwein, U. & Nagengast, B. (in Überarbeitung). When Some Students are Better Off With Lessons “As Usual”: An Aptitude-Treatment Interaction Study in the History Classroom. Contemporary Educational Psychology.
Fauth, B., Wagner, W., Bertram, C., Göllner, R., Roloff, J., Lüdtke, O., Polikoff, M. S., Klusmann, U., & Trautwein, U. (2019, November 7). Don’t Blame the Teacher? The Need to Account for Classroom Characteristics in Evaluations of Teaching Quality. Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/edu0000416
Media Presence:
Link to the interview "Eyewitnesses in History Lessons" with JProf. Dr. Christiane Bertram, in: SWR2, program from 25.04.2017. (German only)
Link to the newspaper article "Learing with Eyewitnesses", in: SpiegelOnline, 21.04.2017. (German only)
Link to the newspaper article "This is how valuable eyewitnesses are in a sucessful history lesson", in: Südkurier, 20.03.2018. (German only)
You can find further press releases here.
The Special Learning Experience with Eyewitnesses – A PhD Project
The findings form the first eyewitnesses study point out that the encounter with a live eyewitness is a compley learning experience which affect the learner's acquisition of historical thinking competences. Students' characteristics play a special role for the effectiveness of the intervention according to the interaction analysis. For this reason Lisa Zachrich examines in her PhD project what is "special" about the encounters with eyewitnesses. A standardized questionnaire was developed partly following already existing survey instruments partly self-developed which was tested with regard to the psychometric quality criteria in a validation study with students in 2019 after an encounter with an eyewitness (N=668). In the winter term 2020/21 a experimental study will be carried out online in which the sensitivity of the measuring instruments will be tested (N=approx.300 students). The questionnaire will be used in the DFG eyewitnesses study to empirically analyse the impact of the respective learing experience of live or video eyewitnesses on the motivational and cognitive outcomes.
Cooperation: Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology and University of Konstanz
Contact person: Lisa Zachrich
DFG Eyewitnesses Study - A Randomized and Controlled Field Study
This study focuses on the question concerning the effect of working with live or digital eyewitnesses. In the large-scale intervention study (72 teachers and their approx. 2000 students) which follows the standards of randomized controlled field trials the videos of the "Generation 1975" are going to be used: Teachers will be trained in training sessions and work in their classes with either a live eyewitness or with the video of the "Generation 1975". The purpose will be to examine the effects of the eyewitnesses intervention with regard to the students' outcomes knowledge and competences as well as motivation and interest. To get a better understanding of the processing operations of the students we will use Lisa Zachrich's questionnaire from her PhD project "The Special Learning Experience with Eyewitnesses ". Doing so we will be able to examine the impact of the special experience of the eyewitness encounter on the effects of the work with eyewitnesses in live versus video conditions.
Cooperation: Hector Research Institute of Education Science and Psychology, University of Tübingen: Ulrich Trautwein, Wolfgang Wagner, Florian Hollund Zentrum für Schulqualität und Lehrerbildung (ZSL): Stefan Schipperges und Carsten Arbeiter
Contact person: Christiane Bertram und Florian Holl