Presentation for Nofa6 conference on subject didactics

1. History and Futures education?
Is the future a relevant subject in history education?
• Survey under students: history studies the past, not the future.
• Interviews with colleagues: history may help us understand
the present, yet extrapolations into the future are to be
avoided. History also trains critical thinking.
• Analysis of Dutch textbooks shows no reflection on future
development.
Some theorists (Wilschut 2017; Rohbeck 2013; Rusen ),
however, underline the need to reflect on the connection
between past, present and future
History: Past, Present and Future

2. You have got to start somewhere:
working with change and continuity
People tend to connect past, present and future through narratives.
Within these narratives change and continuity play a significant role.
Students experience difficulty in working with these concepts, because
they tend to:
1. view change as factual, not as an observation made by a historian;
2. view change in terms of turning points, instead of gradual
developments over longer periods of time;
3. experience difficulties to understand processes of change
themselves change in direction and speed;
4. view developments as unavoidable.
 This makes it difficult to think about probable and preferred futures.
History: Past, Present and Future

3. Change and continuity and Futures Education
• A certain skill in working with the concepts ‘change and
continuity’ is een precondition for thinking about the
future:
- students should be aware that the future will
undoubtedly differ from the present (change is an
integral part of life);
- the future’s often evolves more as part of a long
process of change, than through turning points
- trends may unexpectedly change in direction and
speed
• For example: the secularisation of the Western World
History: Past, Present and Future

4. The Time Machine
• Interactive learning
activity
• ‘Will the Netherlands still
be a democracy in a 100
years time?’
• Different historical actors,
both pro- and anti-
democracy
• Executed with both
students and
international colleagues
History: Past, Present and Future

5. The Time Machine
History: Past, Present and Future

6. Some outcomes & conclusions
• Students and colleagues differed in the degree of historical
background knowledge to provide the actors with an historical
context.
• Both consciously selected those historical actors that support a pro-
democratic narrative.
• Both tended to stressed a historical continuity instead of change in
political ideals.
o Students should work with the concepts of continuity and change in
order to evaluate (implicit) narratives in textbooks.
o A certain degree of historical knowledge is necessary to do history,
but in itself insufficient.
o Students therefore need to be trained constantly how to correctly
work with these concepts, preferably through complex tasks.
History: Past, Present and Future