Students' expressive engagement with historical film's moving images in a Maltese secondary history classroom

Alexander Cutajar

doi:10.18546/herj.15.2.14

Abstract

This paper arises from research into using historical film in a Maltese secondary history classroom vis-à-vis its impact on student motivation, engagement and historical understanding. The paper outlines and discusses indicators of students' affective and cognitive engagement when responding to and analysing historical film's moving images – that is, extracts from footage of twentieth- and twenty-first century historical events captured live on camera as shown on newsreels, broadcast on television or forming part of a historical documentary. Using a single-site study, data was collected from two cohorts of Year 11 students following the history option programme. Each cohort was taught for an academic year and moving images were used as sources in history lessons. Analysing students' discourse in whole-class dialogues to obtain evidence for student engagement, findings showed different indicators of students' expressive verbal engagement with moving images: asking questions, making spontaneous observations, inserting oneself, establishing associations, and peer interaction. Findings suggest that underlying students' expressive engagement were the visual and auditory appeal of moving images, and classroom talk. Features of classroom talk in which moving images were used were consistent with views of dialogic teaching. Based on this evidence, it is argued that moving images can be used as a tool for engaging students, through classroom talk in a dialogic context, in developing historical understanding. It is also suggested that there is potential for using students' verbal utterances when analysing moving images for assessing learning.

Highlights

In the image-rich educational environment of a multimedia digital age, learning history involving historical film’s moving images is the norm
Two factors seemed to underlie students’ expressive engagement and involvement: first, the visual and auditory appeal of moving images; second, classroom talk developed in a dialogic context
By means of the moving images, students could see, for example, what taking to the streets in revolt against communist rule in 1956 Hungary or rushing to shelters because of an approaching air raid during the war in Malta meant

Summary

Introduction

In the image-rich educational environment of a multimedia digital age, learning history involving historical film’s moving images is the norm. Another expressive behaviour that students exhibited involved making verbal connections between an idea presented by the historical film’s moving images and something with which they were already familiar It seemed as though students spontaneously uttered the association that first came to mind upon watching particular content or hearing comments in the historical film extracts – 13 students made this kind of connection. It may be that students in this study were establishing associations mainly because they were already quite familiar with certain topics, which may not necessarily have been encountered in history lessons The knowledge that they had learned over the years in school history, or information that they had come across outside the context of school, was being activated the moment they watched or heard something from the moving-image extracts to which it could be directly related. The two most frequent types of peer interaction were picking up on earlier comments and answering peer questions. White and Gunstone (1992: 17) see a motivating factor in students answering peer questions, ‘for students are keener to answer their own questions than the teacher’s’

Conclusion

Findings

Notes on the contributor