Treading Old Paths in New Ways: Upper Secondary Students Using a Digital Tool of the Professional Historian

Lotta Vikström,Thomas Nygren

doi:10.3390/educsci3010050

Abstract

This article presents problems and possibilities associated with incorporating into history teaching a digital demographic database made for professional historians. We detect and discuss the outcome of how students in Swedish upper secondary schools respond to a teaching approach involving digitized registers comprising 19th century individuals and populations. Even though our results demonstrate that students experience the use of this digital database as messy, stressful, complicated, even meaningless and frustrating, they also perceive working with it as most interesting. We discuss this twofold outcome, its reasons and lessons to learn from it. When technology is functioning and the task is specialized and sufficiently guided by the teacher, which is not always the case, our results propose that digital databases can stimulate young people’s interest and historical thinking. Knowledge construction based upon historical thinking is evident in the students’ examination papers in which they present and debate their findings. These papers indicate that students can use a digital database and write history based upon empirical evidence, source criticism and historical empathy, just as professional historians do.

Highlights

Digital archives have become virtual historical laboratories accessible for historians and students [1,2]
Keeping the promises of the new technology in mind, we find it highly interesting to see whether students experience this digital database as a help in their studies of history and whether they are able to use historical thinking in their knowledge construction, when using a digital database designed for professional historians
As the same instructor was using the same database and since the students were confronted with a comparable assignment, we argue that the comparative findings acknowledged below suffice to highlight similarities, differences and even change in the students’ perceptions of using a digital database in history teaching; perceived problems and benefits in the incorporation of a professional’s historical tool

Summary

Introduction

Digital archives have become virtual historical laboratories accessible for historians and students [1,2]. Scholars claim that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) makes it possible for students to experience, transform and manifest knowledge in a wide variety of forms [7,8] They emphasize how digital archives containing primary sources make it possible for students to come closer to the people of the past and their everyday lives, stimulating historical empathy [3,6]. Lévesque highlights digital history for its “enormous potential of promoting and enhancing the active learning of history” [6] In line with his claim, other scholars describe the use of digitized primary sources and historical archives in classrooms as a way to make students act and think more like historians [5,9].

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Conclusion